Archive of Our Own

Theo booked a spot on Fairview’s second floor this time. It has a balcony, so he’ll consider it a vacation. The color palette of the room—a mishmosh of shades that combined resemble a dead sunflower—is a decent change from the beige-red fusion of the ones on the first floor. Spend enough time in a motel room letting other people reinvent your body and you’re certain to start looking for an escape in the decor, too. 

These walls are painted egg yolk yellow, to not-complement the brown and green floral printed bedspread that dangles just above the scratchy brown carpet. There's a large rectangular wall mirror opposite the bed. He’d prefer taking it down for the night, but it’s nailed in place so he opts instead to tuck the bedsheet around it like a makeshift curtain. Room without a view. Of himself. 

He bunches up the ugly comforter and tosses it onto the chair pushed into the corner of the room, spreads a white tarp over the stripped bed. It makes the cleanup easier and muffles some of the people-stink. 

Motel rooms always smell like bodies and sound like things coming and going. Like cars. They’re really just a sensory soup of guilt, goodbyes, cigarettes, and sex. Their sheets are stories. Stains and odors galore; pick-your-poison, pick-your-body-fluid, pick what part of yourself you leave behind. 

Flavor of the night waited outside in the lot for five minutes while he settled into the room, so at least Theo knows he can follow instructions. Those types are few and far between, lately. The knock on the door is laughably timid. Theo’s half-certain that without an invitation, he’d back away from the door, walk out to the lot, and take off like he’d never even knocked in the first place. 

But Theo beckons him inside with a tired call of, “It’s open.” 

This one’s a short, pug-faced man with stringy flaxen hair tucked behind his ears. There’s a thin sheen of sweat clinging to his skin. Every few seconds his hands clench into fists and release. Nervous tic. His wiry frame is swallowed up by a grey peacoat; the expensive kind, he’s probably got an important reputation to maintain outside these four walls. 

He gave his first name when they’d met in the lot earlier, but Theo willfully forgot it. He never understood why they do that—offer familiarity during a strictly business transaction. Try to make themselves personable in a meeting of mutual debasement. 

He palms the side of his coat briefly before slipping his hand into an inner pocket, almost bashful in the way he sets a small switchblade onto the nightstand. Theo spares it a disinterested glance and flips on the television, there’s some old western playing. Gunslinging and cowboys and whatnot. A sepia-toned somebody hops on a horse that isn’t theirs, it bucks and brays wildly. 

Theo thinks of Ghost Riders, of the Wild Hunt. Of Liam. He wishes he didn’t. Those memories don’t belong here. 

He turns the TV volume down to a manageable hum but cannot do the same to his thoughts. He swivels around toward Switchblade. Says, “Half up front.”

From the other pocket of his peacoat, the man pulls out a leather wallet embossed with initials. F.G.L. Theo chooses to forget those, too, inching over toward the bed as a stack of hundreds falls onto the dresser. Switchblade draws a few stilted steps nearer. His breath smells like Altoids and black coffee. 

“How old are you?” 

Theo raises a brow, asks, “Why’s it matter?” 

“Just—” he cuts himself off with an agitated sigh, runs a hand through his hair and tugs at the scraggly ends. “You’re at least eighteen, right? Just tell me that.” 

“You’re pulling a knife on me in a motel room and you’re worried that I’m underage?” Theo remarks, a deadened sort of amusement in his tone. Switchblade is all shifty-eyed and jittery, though, like he’s waiting for a camera crew and a cop to bust out from the bathroom, so he begrudgingly adds, “Nineteen.” 

Switchblade nods, short and jerky, and sets about undressing. Removes peacoat, blazer, white dress shirt until only a plain undershirt remains. Shoes go next, revealing pinstriped navy socks. Those stay on. Pants, too. It’s a relief. Means this one probably won’t be too messy. He shifts on his feet, shifts his eyes, too, until they land on Theo, awaiting. 

Theo turns away, doesn’t like how eyes feel on him during this part, too hungry and wanting. He peels his shirt off peepshow-slow, unclothing his shame down to the briefs. 

It usually goes like this: they scout his body for the part they hate the most, decide how they want to ruin it. He’s learned there’s typically a pattern to follow if he watches their eyes closely. Face, neck, one arm, the other, chest, stomach, down, down, down. Eyes usually linger longest on his chest. He sometimes wonders if they can tell that’s where it all went wrong. 

The other spots they linger on, well. He doesn’t like to think about those. 

Switchblade takes a tentative seat on the edge of the bed beside Theo, knife in hand. The position’s too friendly and informal, it makes his skin crawl.  

“Is it true, what they say? Whatever I do, it’ll just heal right up?” 

Theo gives a noncommittal hum. He extends a finger, runs the pad of it over the knife’s tip. He pulls his hand back and in an instant thrusts the blade through the center of his palm until it threatens to jut out the other side. Some people get scared away at this part. Blood’s too real a thing to laugh off. Fat, red drops splatter onto the tarp below them and roll down the curve of the mattress, soaking into the fabric of Switchblade’s khakis. Theo draws the blade out with a wet squelch and puts his bloody palm on display. The wound on his hand going, going, gone. Stigmata-free like a phony messiah. 

“Like nothing ever happened,” Theo sighs. 

Switchblade runs his fingers over the flat side of the blade, a cruel sort of fascination shining in his eyes as he draws his hand back, rubbing together his forefinger and thumb slick with Theo’s blood. There’s a promise of a decent payday in the tart excitement bleeding into his chemosignals. 

Theo, like all other nights, sits back and does what he’s best at. Not dying. 

⎶

“—so, I really like my roommate, but I come back to the dorm and there’s a sock on the doorknob, like at least four nights a week. Sometimes five.” 

“He’s conning you. Little do you know he’s enjoying a room to himself night after night.” 

“Pffft, I wish that’s what was happening,” Liam huffs. “Werewolf ears leave nothing unheard. I’ve just been crashing in Nolan’s dingle, which is cool but also sooo far from the main campus.” 

“What the fuck is a dingle?”

“Oh it’s legendary, that’s what it is. S’when there’s two beds like a double room, but one is empty, usually ‘cause the student switched housing or dropped out or chose to live off-campus last minute. And the resident heads can’t put anyone else into the room without your permission. It’s a whole thing.” 

Theo hums, hoisting his laundry basket on top of the washer. He sets his phone down beside it, puts Liam on speaker and lets him share his stories to the empty apartment laundry room, his words drifting up toward Theo’s ears past the rhythmic thrumming of the machines. No dire stains to remove this time. His clothes have been begging him to be good, so he started giving them the courtesy of folding them into a neat pile far removed from the carnage. 

His mind wanders, but every so often his mouth leaks little noises of interest, wordless entreaties for Liam to keep talking. About his friends, his classes, his campus. Happy little life six hours south, somewhere a bit more livable. Theo gleans vicarious satisfaction from it. Imagines himself in a picture he was never really meant to be part of. 

It’s because he’s failure-to-launch boy. The absence of his makers and their frequency-hum instability combined with a town devoid of utter calamity makes a restless, pain-seeking man out of him. He never was great in the quiet moments. 

When the whole lot of them had crossed the graduation stage—Theo, a year late, Liam, Mason, and Corey, a year early—Ms. Martin said to the auditorium of seniors during her closing remarks, “This is the beginning of the rest of your lives.” 

Life, Theo thinks, is too large of a thing to be entrusted with. A struggle like wading out into a river with pockets full of rocks. He’s submerged neck-deep in the shit of it, expending all his effort simply trying to stay still.

“How’s work?” 

Theo falters, a few socks tumble to the floor from the pile of clothing in his arms. There’s a secret burning a hole in his conscience. He shoves it into the washer with his clothes and lets it spin-cycle itself away with the rest of the load. 

He clears his throat, says, “What, you mean the thrilling day-to-day life of a maintenance worker at the Preserve? Oh, it’s a blast.”

Liam snorts on the other end of the line. 

“Yesterday a jogger tripped and broke her ankle on one of the trails. I got to drive her back to the entrance on a souped-up golf cart, and—” 

“Tell me this story ends with you doing something chivalrous like taking her pain.” 

“Nope. It ends with me getting a ten-dollar tip for my heroism,” he boasts.

Theo doesn’t admit that he refused the money, that the thought of accepting a reward just for fulfilling the duties of his job made his stomach churn. Under other circumstances, he’d be grateful, probably. But nestled in his dresser drawer beneath layers of t-shirts lie two—soon to be three—envelopes full of undeposited cash. Used to be one, but it grew comically large in a matter of weeks and Theo opted to add another to the pile rather than reflect on the drawbacks of his motel-night paychecks. 

He steers the conversation away from the topic of himself, prompting Liam about lacrosse. Starts his load and sits atop the washer, splaying out across two of the machines as an impromptu resting spot. He considers its shaky rumbling a much-needed massage. Liam’s voice beside his ear is almost enough to pretend he might really be there. Theo shifts, rolling onto his side and letting his eyes fall shut so as not to confront the nothingness that lies ahead of him. Liam, his voice, right there. 

He’s lulled into a half-doze when life interrupts Liam on the other end of the line, and he says, so fond, so steeped with gentle reluctance, “Theo? I’m heading to the dining hall now. Y’gonna be around if I call back later?” 

Theo sits up and brings his phone with him; he scrolls through his messages, wishes he didn’t. 

Kitchen Knife:  

Got any availability 2nite? 

“Yeah,” he lies, thinking about stopping at the ATM, thinking about running to the corner store for more envelopes. “I’ll talk to you later.” 

⎶

There’s a remarkably mediocre threshold for the amount of damage most people are willing to inflict on a compliant body.  

Keyword, most. Keyword, compliant. 

Theo’s here, first-floor familiarity. All bare skin and watchful eyes tracking his client’s movements around the small motel room, anticipating something clothes won’t survive. Kitchen Knife’s a regular; routine in the form of a blade. Theo is also certain that he’s the source of most of the word-of-mouth referrals that come to him. There’s no comfort in this knowledge, just makes him feel a bit more sick each time they meet up again. 

But he’s got deep pockets and a talent for violence. Pent-up type. Took only three meetings before Theo considered having Parrish or Stilinski run a background check just for curiosity’s sake, but he didn’t want to air out the reasons for his interest in the matter. 

“I tell you, if I could do away with every single one of those HR fucks constantly breathing down my goddamned neck, I would.” 

He makes slow work of running his blade along the edge of a sharpening stone, raising the knife toward the wall sconces every few repetitions to observe how the dim light glints off the surface of the metal. He’s hunched over the dresser, and Theo’s eyes follow the trail of coarse hair running down his back. There’s a tattoo between his shoulder blades, a reticle in thick black ink with its crosshairs positioned to form a boxy-looking A and F above illegible cursive script. Theo’s always thought tattoos on concealed areas of the body must be hidden for a reason. 

“Think those pricks give a shit about their workers?” he spits, pivoting around to lay two bloodshot eyes on Theo, thin lips curled back baring nicotine-stained teeth. Theo stares at his dull canines instead of meeting his gaze, reminds himself that Kitchen Knife is hardly the most dangerous person in the room. “They don’t. They’re in bed with upper management kissing the company’s ass, all of ‘em.” 

He punctuates the words with knife-jabs directed at Theo. He’s worked himself up with the rant alone, round face flushing to a bright red that streaks down his broad chest, strands of dark hair falling free from the receding slickback atop his head with the gesticulations. The peppery smoke of anger taints his scent. Theo lets out a long, slow breath and settles back against the headboard when Kitchen Knife swivels around toward the sharpening stone once again. 

There’s something momentous in this, maybe. Room 106, the same one he ended up in on the first night he fell into this habit soon after his raucous post-graduation summer melted into a quiet fall, and months after Monroe had fled and left in her wake a town both wary and newly aware of the supernatural creatures around them. 

It was a night when loneliness became a thing too palpable—he knows now, and perhaps did even then, that those moments don’t have to be faced alone, he’s got a contact list featuring a few people who can tolerate him enough to prattle on about their day while he quietly tries to forget his own, but sometimes the thoughts that say you deserve this feel more real—and made his apartment uninhabitable. 

He went for a walk following invasive kudzu vines growing along the telephone wires and searching for camaraderie amongst another unwanted thing in this town. The tendrils halted their progress outside the motel, and so did Theo. He must’ve looked aimless and wanting enough to warrant being approached by the tall, bug-eyed guy standing beside the phone booth with a strange, carnal hunger tingeing his expression. He’d slurred out a question, asked if Theo was working tonight with a jerk of his chin in the direction of the rooms over his shoulder. A blank stare standoff commenced between them before recognition flashed in the other’s eyes. 

“I’ve seen you. I know what you are, one of ‘em. The invincible ones,” he said, one accusatory finger pointed Theo’s way. Monster him. Hometown infamy him. Distrust gave way to curiosity in his stare. “I’ll pay extra if you let me. You know.” 

Theo didn’t know. Not until a few fifty-dollar bills were being waved in his face with a small swiss army knife behind it. He thought the man would be easy to snatch cash from and run at best, a homegrown hunter at worst, alone and unchallenging to take out. He was disastrously unprepared, crammed into the bathroom with a stranger who had wooed him with a giving wallet and a promise to harm. He lost time. Came back into himself alone and guilty. Had spilled red all over the turquoise tiles and was left to clean up the mess afterward. Two hundred dollars was the reward for teaching a human that shapeshifters bleed the same way they do. 

Consider this, Theo—splayed out against the tarp on his stomach as a man carves things he can’t see into his backside—an upgrade. Price gouge, too. There’s a learning curve to inventing new ways to hurt yourself. He pays more attention to the warm trickle of blood running down his sides and pooling beneath him than the sting of a blade. That, he learned to tune out long before this. He takes precaution by leaving the mirror uncovered this time, keeps his eyes on Kitchen Knife in the reflection stooped over him, anticipating his movements. The television remains off, Kitchen Knife seems to revel in the way the wet squelching of Theo’s insides cuts through the silence. It’s rivaled only by his heavy, excited breaths. 

He drops his weapon halfway through and opts to use fingers to pry through the exposed layers of dense muscle like he’s staking claim to the flesh. Theo conjures up stillness and thinks about the way people first learn to call something mine by putting their hands all over it. He withholds his healing only long enough to feel the slightest bit fuzzy, detached. Kitchen Knife seems repulsed by the way the edges of Theo’s wounds begin to tighten around his fingertips, grumbles out a gravelly, “Roll over.”

Theo obliges, lies backfirst in a pool of himself. There’s no time to settle, Kitchen Knife kneels over him and thrusts his blade through the meat of Theo’s thigh, draws it out, and repeats the action on the other. Hooks two stubby thumbs inside of each gouge, prying apart bands of muscle as he splays the rest of his red-stained fingers against the surrounding skin with increasing pressure. Sometimes Theo wonders what he’s searching for in the cave of his body. 

He retrieves the knife, boxing Theo in between his thighs as he polka-dots his body with stab wounds. Kitchen Knife’s the one doing the least work here—holding your own body together is no small feat—and yet he’s sweating from exertion; there’s something distinctly unpalatable about the sensation of sweat dripping into the gashes. He doesn’t like the idea of any part of Kitchen Knife going inside of him and lingering. 

“Three more minutes.” 

Theo’s voice is rough on the warning, he finds his teeth again and shakes off the lassitude of blood loss. Really, the clock on the wall tells him that Kitchen Knife’s got closer to ten minutes left but Theo’s got the taste of iron in the back of his throat and thinks it wise to cut this short. 

Kitchen Knife gives a grunt of acknowledgment, hauling himself off of the body he rented for the night. He’s done this at the end of each meeting they’ve had, takes a step back to spend the last few moments not doing more damage, but instead examining the gore he’s already inflicted. Taking mental pictures. 

Back when meals were few and far between, Theo subsisted on the idea that staring at food before you ate it would help sate hunger sooner. He wonders if this is the same thing. Kitchen Knife is drinking up the sight of him, making sure he’ll be able to curb his appetite until the next time. He’s the reverse image of Theo right now, painted in his blood but lacking any wounds. He heaves a sigh and retrieves his knife, wiping off the blade on a towel. His anger’s not so biting anymore, blends into the vague scent of the history of bodies in this room.

Theo is not nearly naive enough to consider this pastime an act of good, but he cannot help but be motivated by the belief that this emotional purging—human rage and resentment given an outlet in the form of his body—is better done to him than anyone else. 

Kitchen Knife is uncaring in his cleanup routine, tugs his unsoiled clothes right over the smears of blood caked onto his skin, the ones that hadn’t budged with his half-assed towel-down. He’s more meticulous in his handling of the knife and sharpening stone, cleaning any last traces of Theo off the items and sliding them into their respective carrying cases; he packs his secrets away in his briefcase. 

He wordlessly drops a stack of bills onto the nightstand, the other half of Theo’s pay plus a tip, and lumbers out of the room without so much as a glance back toward the mess he’s made. The sounds that follow his departure—the door slamming shut, footsteps receding, Theo’s skin knitting itself back together, silence—carry with them a sort of violence unmatched by the night’s affairs.

Theo doesn’t linger long. He showers; the water is biting but it helps staunch the bleeding, runs a pale pink and pools beneath his heels. The stream sprouts goosebumps along his limbs until he’s numb with it, cold and unfeeling. His body isn’t so red and leaky anymore when he steps out and does the same rinsing routine on the tarp he’d placed over the bed. 

Sometimes leaving is the hard part. He’s got heavy pockets and a shameface fleeing the crime scene with the evidence tucked away in a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He drops off the key with the desk clerk and beelines for the parking lot but can’t be home free yet because—

“Theo?” 

He’d seen it on his way out of the room but tried to pay it no mind, the redblue strobe of a squad car. Parrish has got an unsuspecting albeit bewildered smile playing on his lips, beckoning him over with a wave. His eyes flit down toward the duffel bag and back up. Theo molds his expression into anything but guilty, tries to mimic the slope of the hellhound’s grin as he nods in greeting. 

“Thought I recognized your truck. What’re you doing over here this time of night?” 

Theo shifts on his feet, itchy soles. 

“Recon. I’m following up on a lead about some potential hunters-in-the-making meeting out here,” he lies, second-nature-smooth. “There’s been a few guys hanging around the Preserve during my shifts lately, asking a lot of specific questions about the ‘local wildlife.’”

“And I’m guessing they don’t mean deer,” Parrish sighs. 

“Considering they didn’t seem too interested in my suggestion that they attend one of the Beacon County Nature Association meetings, probably not. Figured it wouldn’t hurt to keep tabs on them,” he says, feigning nonchalance. “You?” 

“Domestic disturbance,” Parrish offers. He mouths the word drunks like it’s too scandalous to give sound. 

Theo hums in agreement, says, “Thought I might’ve heard some shouting.” 

“The whole argument apparently started over what takeout they wanted to—”

“Deputy Parrish, code four.” 

“Code four, go ahead,” Parrish speaks into the radio strapped to his vest. He shoots Theo an apologetic look and mouths a talk to you later. Leaving comes quick. Theo shoves his secrets in the passenger seat and peels out of the parking lot leaving cop cars and motel rooms behind him, a memory. Tonight, he thinks he’ll start a new envelope. 

⎶

Theo’s lighter today. No headnoise, no pain-seeking routines. Chalk it up to being in good company, settling into a post-lunch stupor with Malia and Alec at a hokey restaurant they’d been dying to visit. Cheddarcade. Its walls are lined with rows of vintage pinball machines and their specialty is grilled cheese sandwiches the size of an average head with baskets of waffle fries to match. It’s a den of retro-style booths, kitschy decor, and grease. 

Really good tomato soup, too. 

“Cheers to another meeting of the Left Behinds,” Alec proclaims, raising his watered-down lemonade to clink the glass against Malia’s soda and Theo’s water. 

Theo and Malia eyeroll-grumble-sigh begrudged acceptance. Alec’s been trying to make the name stick ever since the rest of their group went off to college, like the label brands them with importance, casts them in starring roles rather than as side characters. Either way, it’s a shitty B-movie at best, the kind you’d find at the bottom of a discount bin in a video store. 

Alec has still got half of his grilled cheese left, set it aside and stuffed himself with garlic fries instead after Malia commented on the way it oozed pesto and Theo opted to use the word “orifice” to refer to what Alec preferred to call a “sauce crevice.” 

The semantics are meaningless; Theo snags a piece of the contentious leftovers and dips it into the lukewarm remains of his own tomato soup anyway. Says, “Every time you announce that I think it sounds just a little bit more pathetic.”

Alec opens his mouth to refute the claim, but is interrupted by the pitiful sound of a waitress being nagged into singing the Happy Birthday song to a disgruntled thirteen-year-old and her overeager parents on the other side of the restaurant. The father sidles around the front of the table to capture the contrived annoyance of the grimace-grin stretched tight across his daughter’s face—illuminated by the warm glow of a sparkler candle protruding from a brownie—on disposable camera film. Her mother’s got an arm around her shoulder, tight-squeezing a birthday wish into fruition as the candle is blown out. Happy family them. 

“It is a little pathetic,” Malia chimes in belatedly. She shakes off her straw and dunks it into Alec’s lemonade. His protests go unheard as she continues, “Full disclosure, you two are gonna be the only Left Behinds soon. I’m planning on guilting Peter into funding an indefinite vacation in France. I think Cora might join me.”

She takes a sip, frowns, and dumps the rest of her flat, not-Sprite into the lemonade cup. The waiter said they didn’t offer Coke products. Rattled off some zingy, off-brand name like Jolt or Zip or Yikes, This Soda Sucks instead. She stirs the drink with her straw, and adds, “I want to spend the rest of my youth loafing around the beaches of the French Riviera eating bread and cheese.”

“Charming,” Theo drawls.

“Perks of having a rich deadbeat dad who, as a result of his midlife crisis, wants to make up for almost two decades of lost time.” 

“You do realize that you’re saying this to your two parentless friends,” Alec snorts. “There’s no sympathy to be had from us.” 

Malia offers a half-apologetic shrug. “And I killed most of my family. We’re all fucked up, it’s why we get along.” 

It’s blunt enough that it doesn’t sting. They laugh like children in a graveyard—guilty, honest, a little sad. Without full comprehension of the funny thing, because if they were to think any harder about it, uglier sounds might leave their mouths. 

When the moment dies, Alec goes quiet in a pensive way, running his fingers over the woodgrain of the table like he’s working up the nerve to speak. 

“After I graduate, I wanna go back to Los Angeles,” he admits. 

Theo gets it. Beacon Hills is a hard home to have. The welcome sign on the edge of town has never really applied to any of them. But that doesn’t make his chest any less tight at the premise of being somewhere-elsed. Conversations like these make him feel like “lost” is a permanent character flaw—a big scarlet L in the middle of his forehead—and not a transient state of being. The lie he tells himself is that he can hold himself together as long as he stays in place. 

Their heads swivel toward Theo. His turn to take a bat at life. 

“Me? I want to…” 

He trails off, hands clenching in his lap beneath the table. Squished between his fists is a lump of clay called Future. He’s not much of a sculptor; never learned to create with his hands, only destroy.

“I want—”

There is no difference between age nine and age nineteen. He’s an overgrown child too mature between the ears. He’s a small, scared adult fumbling at life without training wheels. Life. He wants to cut out all the bad parts and create a patchwork quilt with the scraps of good that remain, make a blanket fort and curl up inside of it forever. 

Say it, a quiet, desperate part of him thinks. Tell them. No one makes it through this life without a little bit of wanting. 

Father-of-the-year stands and passes their booth on the way to the restroom. His eyes cut over to their group and know exactly where to land. He’s too real up close, lacks the comfortable anonymity afforded by distance. Theo’s caught staring even as his figure disappears into the restroom, Alec and Malia follow his gaze. 

Hot, prickly shame settles over his shoulders. Theo does not know his name, but he can recall the silver fillings on two of his molars on the right side, that he walks with a limp that favors his left leg, how his dark hair is always combed to conceal a thin, balding patch at the crown of his head, and that he smells of tobacco and citrusy pomade. Even this knowledge is too intimate. Turns a restaurant into something as tiny as a motel room. 

Messy life. Small town familiarity. Theo had tried so hard to keep it all contained, compartmentalized those late nights enough that he never once considered evidence of them would bleed out into his daytime hours. 

“The check. Please,” he clears his throat, flagging down the waiter just as he brushes past. He shoves a hand in his pocket, says, “Actually, here, you can just put it on this card.” 

Alec’s brows raise. “In a hurry?”

“Listen, never question free things,” Malia chides.

Theo sags down in the booth, pulls his lips into a vacant grin. Pushes aside the spoon in front of him because he doesn’t like the way his own distorted, red-crusted reflection ogles him. He shrugs and says, “Figured if I saw the bill it might make me revoke my generosity.” 

The answer quells the curiosity, buries his haste under a guise of normalcy. 

Alec hums, eyes drifting over toward the happy family’s table. “Think we can get a brownie free of charge if I lie and say it’s my birthday?” 

Malia nods, “Maybe they’ll even pay us if we let them skip the song.” 

“Your birthday’s in a few weeks,” Theo says. “I will personally bake you a brownie if you want one that badly.” 

Alec grins, wide and bright enough to almost make all the ugly things in Theo’s chest loosen up. 

“I’m totally taking you up on that offer.” 

#1 Dad strolls out of the restroom and keeps his eyes to himself this time, but Theo can’t stop looking at his daughter and wife. He wonders if they know that the man who captures their fondest memories on disposable cameras uses those same hands to carve unhappy memories into a body whenever the picture-perfect fatherhood act starts to weigh too heavily on him. He wonders if they’ve ever seen the toolbox he brings to the motel, ever opened it up to retrieve a pair of pliers or a wrench and saw strange, red stains on the screwdriver that they wrote off as rust. He wonders when was the last time that screwdriver was used to repair rather than destroy. 

But they stand, the whole family. And they leave. And they thank the host and their waitress. And Theo doesn’t have to wonder anything about them anymore. 

“Earth to space cadet,” Alec says, waving a hand in front of Theo’s face. His debit card’s back on the table, along with a copy of the receipt. Malia wandered off to play pinball; she’d been saving up quarters just for this. And she’ll need them, if her growl of frustration after losing her first round in approximately twenty seconds is anything to go by. 

“Sorry. Just thought I recognized them,” he shrugs, “I’ve probably seen ‘em at the Preserve or something.” 

“S’that why you never come over? Work?” 

Malia gives up on her pinball machine of choice, decides to start fresh with her handful of quarters and moves two machines down. 

“I’m permanently on Melissa’s shitlist, you know,” Theo points out. “I’d rather not intrude.” 

“Yeah, but you’re not on mine,” Alec says. 

And his eyes weigh too heavy on Theo. And he feels transparent. And he’s worried about what awful things Alec might see in him. So he makes himself murky with falsehoods. Says, “Well, I enrolled in classes at Beacon County Community College just to get some gen-ed credits under my belt before the fall. It’s been keeping me pretty busy.” 

He regrets the lie the moment it rolls off his tongue. It’s something he can’t backtrack on. The enrollment papers have been sitting on his kitchen counter untouched for two weeks. Call it commitment anxiety. He already missed the enrollment period for the current quarter, won’t be able to register until the spring. 

“Dude, that’s sick. Good for you,” Alec beams. He’s the contagious sort of happy. Makes Theo almost buy into his excitement until he remembers that there’s no real basis for it. “Also super nerdy. I thought the point of a gap year was to not do school. But, still. Good for you.” 

“I don’t like to let my brain idle,” he says. So he spends time remembering and works hard forgetting. His mind runs laps escaping recollection but realizes it’s on a treadmill built of bad thoughts with nowhere to go. He thinks up lies and then mixes them up and spits out botched half-truths anyway. Idle, his brain is not. 

Alec leans forward, lowers his voice into something serious, and says, “And you’re, like, doing okay, right? Not school-wise. I mean you.” 

Say it, that small voice begs, again. Tell him. He could fess up. Be clean of mind for the first time in months. Destroy the thing that wants to destroy him. But the part of him that wants to be honest is a milksop. And the thing that wants to destroy him is just him. 

“Yeah. ‘Course,” he nods. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

⎶

It’s raining. 

It wasn’t when Theo got here, but some time between his room assembly routine and the knock on the door, the sky decided to open up. He’s booked for a double feature kind of night. Husband and wife duo, twice the pay. They haven’t so much as spared him a glance, though. Too busy airing out their grievances with each other in front of an audience of one. 

The husband swipes a hand over his face, lips twisted into a scowl. He’s got wide, round eyes and dimpled cheeks that make his frustration seem almost unthreatening, even beneath his shitstain beard. Doesn’t stop his wife from folding in on herself, though. Arms crossed over her chest as she inches toward the door. 

“You cried your ass off because you thought I was cheating!” he fumes. “Begged and begged to know where I went at night.” 

She shakes her head. Her greying auburn hair falls in loose, rain-frizzed waves over her shoulders and she smells like vanilla-scented perfume and dark liquor. Her small, kind face reminds Theo of his first grade teacher Mrs. Sweeney. Memories of that sort are out of place here. 

“All I wanted was your honesty—”

“And here it is!” he interrupts, jabbing a meaty thumb in Theo’s direction to punctuate his words. “Here. It. Fucking. Is.” 

Theo considers leaving, slipping out the front door while the two of them duke it out. But it’s raining. And the television’s quietly playing an old sitcom. And he can hear the low pitter-patter of raindrops against the windows beneath the yelling. He sits criss-cross applesauce on the bed while the couple paces and argues before him—their eyes cutting over toward Theo like he’s a child hearing words too vulgar for his young ears—and he tries to remember if this is what family felt like. 

The husband plods over to the nightstand and retrieves his weapon of choice. 

“I mean, Christ, Sharon, we fuckin’ talked about this! It’s a hammer. The fuck are you scared of? No blood, no guts, nothing. Just swing the damn hammer!” 

He crosses the room in four swift, angry strides. She flinches, then blinks in rapid succession like she’s trying to wipe the windshield of her eyes, reconcile the sight of the man in front of her. When her mascara-caked lashes flutter they look like spiky black caterpillars. 

“I said I would come with you, Bill, and that’s it,” she snaps. “I never wanted to be involved in this, any of your sick fantasies.”  

There’s some accusatory branding in her tone. She sighs, heavy and apologetic. Turns toward Theo and says, “No offense, alright?”  

Her voice curls around him like a stiff hug. Theo shrugs. But she continues to stare at him like she’s looking at the incarnation of the rift in her marriage. Some bastard child, illegitimate son. Or maybe something more pitiful than that: sadfaced lost kid on the side of a milk cartoon. 

But her attention is drawn away by a shout of, “So, what, you wanna sit and watch? You wanna pussy out and judge me from the corner so you can berate me about it later?” 

She wrings her hands together. Says, “I won’t judge—”

“Speak up, you had no problem nagging me the whole ride here. I wanna hear you, come on.” 

They only get louder. The room stinks of disdain and anxiety—burnt and cloyingly bitter like worn down tire treads. 

“I said no.” 

Theo thinks of Parrish, of the domestic dispute he was called out to the motel for last week. The walls here are thin. He doesn’t want to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time if one of the attendants on duty overhears. He clears his throat, sitting up a bit taller on the bed. The tarp crinkles with his movement.

The husband draws nearer, holding the hammer out to his wife. “What was that?”

“I said—”

Theo interrupts, voice uncharacteristically nervous, “Clock’s running, so—”

“We’re paying for this, you know,” he says, voice lowered to a dangerous whisper. 

“You’re paying for this. And ignoring all our other bills to do so.” 

His expression darkens. He pries open her hand. It’s small and doll-like. The hammer looks out of place in her grip. Her husband drags her by the elbow over to the bed, ignoring her protests the whole way. Theo wants to cover his ears, curl in on himself, but instead focuses on staying very still. 

“Come on, Sharon. Let ‘im have it.

“I fucking said no!”

It’s shrill, the protest. But she punctuates her anger by slamming the hammer down onto Theo’s knee with enough force to make his eyes water. The swing carries with it the weight of decades of resentment. His patella cracks audibly, makes her shrink back all wide-eyed and scared. Theo swallows the whine clawing its way up his throat; that usually deters them—the normal ones, the ones who want to blow off steam rather than relish in a stranger’s pain—from taking another hit, and he’d rather not start up another round of fighting.  

So, Theo, he stays still.  

One shaky hand comes up to cover her mouth but it doesn’t do much to conceal the awful half-laugh-half-wail that sneaks past her fingers. The husband is quiet, for once. He’s taken a seat in the armchair in the corner of the room, slouching down against the cushion with his legs spread wide, hungry satisfaction revealing itself in the slope of his lips. The hand he’d placed on the armrest drifts downward, toward his thigh. Theo doesn’t let his eyes linger after that, doesn’t want to know what he’ll find if he does.

“Try it again, Shar,” he murmurs.

She turns back to Theo but something’s changed in her eyes, a detached acceptance, steely resolve. It happens to all of them. She’s learned to tune the boy out and acknowledge only his body. 

“Your hand,” she whispers, staring down at the tarp. Theo nods along to the implied instruction, places it on the nightstand and waits. She draws the hammer up and slams it down, rattling the clock on the dresser. She does it again. And a third time, letting out little pitchy grunts of exertion, panting with each swing. She turns his metacarpals into bone confetti but goes a little green at the sight of blood and opts to move elsewhere. At her husband’s suggestion, the shin is next. 

Theo tries watching television but the sitcom laughtrack seems mocking so he listens instead to the rain.

Blunt force objects are his least favorite. Theo remembers this only after his other hand’s taken a beating and the husband strides over to participate in the body-breaking. He wields the hammer like a bat and takes aim at his ribcage, knocks the air out of his lungs and leaves Theo queasy and gasping through a mouthful of iron. Ribs and hands are a drag to heal. Tricky placement and too many bones involved. He can’t feel his fingers and both of his swollen hands have turned an unpleasant shade of mauve. Breathing is a chore that he’s tempted to forego for the sake of comfort. 

The crunch of bones is a lot quieter than all the arguing, though, and less likely to draw unwanted attention, so Theo can’t complain too much. But, like all things—rain, TV programs, physical pain—their booking comes to an end. The wife goes pale and teary-eyed the moment she steps back to survey all the damage. Sometimes it’s not the cruelty that’s the hardest part, but being confronted with it afterwards. She stumbles into the bathroom and pukesobs into the toilet bowl while her husband forks over a wad of cash with a wide, dimpled grin and a proud “thanks, bud” like he just participated in a session of the world’s most effective marriage counseling. Theo doesn’t pick it up to count it. His hands aren’t very cooperative at the moment. 

The wife won’t look Theo in the eye when she returns from the bathroom. He isn’t sure why his throat clogs with betrayal. He thinks about calling her name. His brain gets as far as S-H-A before he overrides any sort of camaraderie. The husband slings an arm over his wife’s shoulders. They leave in silence. 

Sometimes, when he tries hard to remember his clients’ names—those rare occasions when he’s tempted by familiarity—the only thing he can recall is the sound of a door slamming shut. 

He considers showering—the heat would help with some of the aching—but he can't raise his arms above shoulder-level before his chest seizes up, intercostal muscles spasming in protest. His hands are fucking useless until he resets the bones so they can heal but the feat nears impossible considering he’s lacking an unbroken one to do so. It would hurt. All of it. So he instead stays very still and listens to the rain and dozes off watching the slapstick actors on TV experience laughable, make-believe pain. 

Fickle masochist him. 

⎶

He got a strike at work. Six months of flawless performance just to get reprimanded for showing up thirty-eight minutes late unannounced. Overslept. Woke up in a bed that wasn't his own. Forgot about his morning shift. Forgot to return the motel room key. Had to double back. Dirty clothes. Broken ribs. Broken hands. 

Makes for a bad start to the day. 

The strike system is probably bullshit and he’s the best employee they’ve got—always picks up other people’s shifts when needed and works harder than he really should for minimum wage because a little praise makes a desperate, needy man out of him—but the reprimand cut like a knife nonetheless. Overnight rain made a mud pit of the Preserve. The trails needed clean-up before opening. He got a talking to by his supervisor, sat silent and sullen in the tiny office listening to a bunch of buzzwords that all boiled down to disappointment. “Get to work, and please don’t let us down again.” 

Failure is a hard thing for him to shake off. He carries the weight of it the rest of the day. Dirtier clothes. Mud down to his socks. Left hand still swollen. Right one shaky. Skipped lunch break to make up for being late. Supervisor said see you tomorrow instead of have a good night. Hard to breathe. Ribs aren’t the issue. His apartment is quiet and empty and all too readily allows his head to be the opposite. 

But this—

Liam, Mason, Corey trapped in little videochat boxes on his laptop screen, animated enough in their midterms study-break goofing off session that Theo could close his eyes and almost believe they’re with him instead of scattered across a few different campuses around the state

—is a salve. 

“Wait, wait, wait. Guys, watch this,” Mason says. “C’mon, Li, let’s do the thing we practiced.” 

In tandem, the duo holds their arms out as if gripping an invisible rope. A silent struggle ensues, mime tug-of-war. Mason yanks and Liam tosses himself against the right boundary of his video display. Liam lets go of the rope entirely, and Mason flies backward in his rolling chair. Corey applauds. They’re Three Stooges levels of stupid but kinship is a thing that heals. His lips jerk upward, they don’t like his mind so they grow one of their own. 

“Theo, I know you’re laughing,” Liam says. “Dude, stop being a creeper and turn on your camera.” 

And maybe he is. But he doesn’t really want the weight of eyes right now—Theo is shower-clean but still worries that he’s covered in visible moral filth from head to toe—and wants to see himself even less, but declining the request would only attract questions. And then he’d have to think about the mud, and the small office, and the admonishing words, and the hands, the ribs, the S-H-A-XXX. So he obliges. 

There’s no recoil, no scrutinizing looks. Mason lets out a melodramatic, “Oh, my eyes. It burns!” at the sight of him, hoodie-snug and couchstuck, but only because he once made a joke that Theo has no right to go through life conventionally attractive and self-aware so it’s now his goal to take him down a peg. But Liam, he just grins and sighs out a quiet, “There he is. Hey.” 

Warmth fumbles in his gut. 

“Hey yourself,” he greets. “You know, the whole mime act wouldn’t be half bad if Corey wasn’t in the middle of you two on my screen.” 

Liam drops the invisible rope and the act. “Damn. Didn’t think about that.”

“Okay, wait, I’m gonna hold out my arms,” Corey says. “You two pretend you’re pulling them.”

Liam and Mason follow suit. The lag turns their act into a series of uncoordinated convulsions but Theo thinks that makes it more entertaining anyway. His cheeks hurt in a good way. Not like his ribs or hands. 

Mid-act, his intercom buzzes. Visitors are few and far between, but wrong-apartment buzzers aren’t. Theo steps away from his laptop and strides over to the receiver, hits the button to let the person into the building anyway. 

“Wait, where are you—” Mason cuts himself off with a sigh. “Alright, I’m now realizing that Theo’s the only one who gets to see the end result. We’re gonna have to take this show on the road if we ever want to get the recognition we deserve.” 

“You’re not missing much,” Theo calls out from across the room. 

Corey lowers his voice a register. Says, “Coming soon to a computer screen near you…”

Theo begins his amble back over to the couch only to be interrupted by the sound of boots drawing nearer to his apartment, a knock on the front door. He considers ignoring it, hoping whoever knocked is misplaced and will keep moving down the hallway toward their destination. But the presence remains on the other side of his door. 

He unlocks it, pulls the door open to reveal Deputy Parrish looking certain, not at all out of place. 

“Got a warrant?” Theo asks. 

Parrish’s smile is all earnest and good-natured. He says, “Don’t need one if you invite me in.” 

He raps his fist against the edge of the doorframe when Theo steps aside to give him clearance, and he recalls the singe of those flaming knuckles against his cheek. Liar-him taking a hit so Stiles wouldn’t have to, spitting blood but swallowing secrets. The memory is dizzying in its clarity. Time is like that, he thinks. One long, slippery moment punctuated only by blinks. Memory, the self-serving hands on a clock dial; it’ll pluck a person out of the present and throw them into the past whenever it sees fit.  

As Parrish steps inside, hovering just beyond the entryway, Theo finds himself questioning his choice of apartment decor, whether there’s something incriminating in the way he lives. Wooden pallets taken from behind a warehouse, stacked together and painted white for a coffee table. A misdemeanor in the form of a stolen stop sign hanging on his wall, larceny disguised as the two lawn flamingos he and Liam snatched from the front yard of one of Monroe’s civilians-turned-soldiers after the battle at the hospital—an act of the world’s mildest revenge. 

A dresser drawer full of cash. He doesn’t want to think about the legality of its source. 

“S’that Parrish?” 

The tinny voices rattling out from his laptop speakers let out a chorus of hellos. 

“Sorry if I’m interrupting,” he falters, glancing from the laptop to Theo. “I can come back another time, just wanted to check up on the hunter situation.” 

“Wait, what hunter situation?”

“What?”

“Did something happen?”

Theo himself is in the “what?” camp, but keeps his face carefully blank while he racks his brain for context. His life is small, lately. The answer doesn’t have much to hide behind. Kitchen Knife. Room 106. Domestic Disturbance. 

That. Of course. Because he’s forever backed into a corner by his past self. Build a home on a hill of falsehoods and regular maintenance becomes a necessity. He’s out of practice, got spoiled by the comfort of a briefly honest life. 

“Right, yeah. Long day, sorry,” Theo sighs. More questioning chatter from the screen. He prefers the mime routine to the inquisitive looks. He says, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll fill you guys in later.” 

Their protests are cut short as he closes his laptop screen and turns back to Parrish. He’s got an expectant look on his face, jerks his head in the direction of the laptop. 

“You didn’t tell them?”

His tone verges on accusatory. Theo bristles.

“They’re in school,” he says, waving a dismissive hand. He doesn’t like the reedy tinge of dejection in his voice. “Figured they’ve got more important things to worry about.”

Parrish frowns. “I’d say a potential threat to the pack is pretty important.”

Theo rubs his palms together and squeezes. The dull, lingering ache in his hands squeezes him back. 

“For what it’s worth, it doesn't look like the hunters were doing more than passing through town,” he says, tone bored, unruffled. “I wasted an hour eavesdropping on their meeting. They’re struggling with recruitment, too many people are afraid to align themselves with a hunter movement that has a leader who’s gone into hiding.” 

The statement is cherry-picked from a report Stiles sent on the status of Monroe’s satellite groups in the pack groupchat last month. So, half-truth. 

He continues, “There’s no imminent danger, but it could be something to keep tabs on. Sorry for the anticlimactic housecall, although a phone call probably would’ve been fine.”

What he’s more sorry for is the fact that people believe his lies. His tongue spins pretty, placating stories that beg listening ears to trust him, taffy-pulling truth into something sweet and unrecognizable. Old habits. He wants to undo himself, put his life in reverse and walk backwards through the past few months like that would be enough to rectify his string of small lies and big messes. 

Parrish releases a long, slow breath and nods. He’s got his hands on his hips, fingers resting against his belt loops. Cop-postured even when he’s in civilian clothes. Theo wonders if it’s a subconscious habit or if something in his story’s made sirens sound in his brain. 

“Okay, good to know. I guess I’ll get going, then. Sorry again for interrupting,” he says. Theo shadows him on his way to the door, hoping for a departure devoid of more questioning. He doesn’t get it. Parrish is only one step past the threshold when he swivels around and asks, “What about the blood?” 

“Blood,” Theo echoes, fist clenching around the doorknob. “Not sure what you’re talking about.” 

There’s something criminally nice about Parrish even as a veil of suspicion descends across his face. His grin shrinks, small and close-mouthed, yet he can’t help but look earnest. He replies, “Back at the motel, I could’ve sworn I smelled blood on you.”

He punctuates the statement with a loose shrug, like even he thinks the claim is unlikely. Theo is cautious in his silence. To talk would mean either questioning Parrish’s recollection or admitting fault on his own end. He raises a brow, remains impassive. 

After a beat, Parrish yields. Says, “It’s just odd, that’s all. Glad to know everything turned out fine.”

“Right,” he nods. “Thanks for stopping by.” 

“Sure thing. I’ll see you around, Theo.” 

He exhales only after the door has slammed shut, when Parrish’s footsteps recede along the hallway and disappear down the stairwell. Familiar sound. 

Liam: 

-hunters??

-call me back

+1 (209) 315-8778:

-Any openings tonight?

Referrals are getting out of hand and he doesn’t know what to do about it. He’s known by too many people whose faces he wouldn’t be able to pick out of a lineup. It’s sloppy, he’s well-aware. He surrendered himself to word-of-mouth and now its teeth have latched onto him. 

He tries to stay in place. He does. Calls Liam but it goes to voicemail and the apartment walls feel like they’re closing in on him, and his next-door neighbor’s chihuahua keeps barking, and the stop sign on the wall looks like it’s yelling at him, and memory is yanking him backwards once again. So he leaves. 

Theo’s just—

He’s just going for a walk. That’s all. Following the kudzu vines. 

⎶

Thursday.

Shears. 

$620. 

In 202 Theo is a midnight snack. Sustenance is the color red in a moonless room. He’s pliant and bored as a man who smells like spearmint gum kneels over him wielding shears. The utility type. Orange rubber handles with two thick, serrated blades. 

He’s pretty sure Jenna has the same pair in her kitchen. He and Liam used to sit in the living room splitting their attention between homework and Court TV after school and she’d be in the next room over, humming to herself while she cut up chicken thighs for her cacciatore. Thursday nights at Liam’s smelled like stewed tomatoes and onions. She always used to call Theo into the kitchen, raise a wooden spoon to his lips, and ask for his opinion on the broth as if he knew shit about flavor profiles more complex than those found in instant ramen seasoning packets. And every time, she’d smile like his mumble of “it’s really good” was the first compliment she ever heard. 

Shears is wide-eyed and hungry. He makes too much eye contact, as if he’s trying to observe in Theo’s expression the exact moment his constitution weakens. Haphazard with each snip, like a child wielding training scissors cutting shapes out of a paper snowflake. But Theo’s skin is not nearly as delicate, doesn’t give in as easily as paper nor bird bones; it resists every cut and spills reluctance onto the tarp. Shears is handsy by necessity; overexerts himself with excitement and tries placing a steadying hand on the bed but slips in Theo’s blood so he repositions his wet, red palm against Theo’s thigh. Grips so tightly he thinks Shears could be trying to press his hands straight through him. But he’s scrawny—arms like breadsticks, corporate deskjob physique that was swallowed up by the suit he wore to the room. Sweat has beaded on his stubbly upper lip. Hard to consider him a threat, more like a paying nuisance. 

Jenna calls, sometimes. David too. They invite him over for dinner on a regular basis, a reminder that one empty seat at the table doesn’t mean his has to go unoccupied, too. He’s good over the phone but afraid of their eyes. Has shame where his skin used to be. They were the first two he ran the idea of taking a gap year by. Even before Liam, because he was too happy, too eager. Put too much stake in the belief that Theo and normalcy could coexist. He’d been blowing up balloons for Liam’s Signing Day party when he let the words “I think I need a break” slip past his lips. Felt like his life had been in full throttle since he was nine, never had a moment to breathe. Deferred his admission for a year to learn how to live. By himself. With himself. In spite of himself.  

So, gap year. Maybe he mixed up the definitions for self-sufficiency and self-destruction. 

The sounds bother Theo more than anything else. Shallow panting, shears snipping, tarp crinkling, the sticky pull of flesh sluggishly stitching itself together. Shears is making streamers out of the skin of his arms. And Theo’s thinking about chicken cacciatore. And he fucking hates himself for it. 

⎶

Friday.

Hands.

$515.

Sometimes, in the hollowness of the in-between moments—after the text message, during the room set-up, before the pain—he gets such a stab of loneliness that he considers reading the small, untouched leather bibles always shoved in the top drawer of the nightstands. He’s not looking for something to believe in. Maybe just a little commiseration. 

There’s a drug deal in room 111 and crying in 109. Quieter trouble takes the middle. Hands. Just hands. He’s got big, broad knuckles—creased, leathery skin stretched tight over the bone, grey hairs sprouting from each finger—and clubbed thumbs. He wears a gaudy state champion ring on his middle finger. Always greets Theo with a smile like a butter knife. Dull, mocking, insincere. 

Hands is strong and burly but Theo can take a punch. Knows the language of fists well. Through chest, against mouth, breaking nose. Wrath finds a home in his body. Tara, when they were younger, she used to have a hell of an arm. Would sock him on the shoulder with her tiny balled fist and yell “punch buggy” any time they’d drive past a Volkswagen Beetle. He’d summon up enough crocodile tears that their dad would guilt her into kissing her fingers and slapping them against the punch-tender spot with a grumble of the world’s most bitter apology. 

His mind hasn’t wandered there in—he doesn’t know how long. 

Memory. Its hands. 

Real brute, this one. Sometimes he calls Theo names that aren’t his own but the unfamiliarity is preferable. Theo makes up stories for the monikers. Old sports rival. Employer that fucked him over. Asshole who cut him off on the highway. Hands grunts with the exertion of each punch and goes so red in the face that Theo worries his ex-football player heart isn’t as fit as it used to be. An eavesdropper would probably think someone was in here beating off to one of the motel’s premium channels and not channeling rage into their fists and setting them loose on a volunteer body. 

Theo doesn’t like pain. Learned that about himself a decade ago. But he can tolerate it, and enduring is instinct. Bites his tongue through the urge to utter it’s okay, you don’t have to stop. Grits his teeth through each impact and imagines a cyanide pill lodged between his molars. Gentle death. Bitter almonds. 

He’s not without boundaries. His face, head, and neck are no-go zones and if he needs a break he gets one. Two minutes to catch his breath, spit blood, and heal. Hands likes it when Theo curls in on himself, pillbug style. Fetal position. Asked for it once and he’s obliged ever since, only because it gives his stomach and chest a break. Hands usually tires out before the hour mark anyway, though. 

One meaty fist slams into his shoulder. Rattles him bone-deep. Pressure builds behind Theo’s eyes, hot and unwelcome. 

It hurts. 

⎶

Saturday.

Cigarettes. 

$600. 

In room 104 Theo lets a man with a jagged, chipped front tooth and a splotchy pink birthmark across his neck and jaw vandalize his body with cigarettes. It’s one of two rooms on the premises where smoking is permitted but the scent of tobacco and yellow nicotine stains on the wallpaper seem to find their way into the other rooms anyway. 

A cigarette meets the tip of the lighter, finds its way to Theo’s forearm. He hates the smell but it’s unavoidable in close quarters. Cigarettes. Not the scent of burning flesh, although it’s a close second. Small, round welts bubble up and blister beneath the red hot tip. Ash breaks off and paints dusty streaks along Theo’s skin. His arm looks as if he’s got a case of molten chickenpox.  

“They go away,” Cigarette says, brittle-voiced as he stares down at Theo’s arm. His eyes—dark like a strong cup of coffee—brand more than the cigarette does. Not fascination in them. Jealousy. “Every fucking time they just go away.”

He doesn’t know what to say. Sorry I’m not a good enough body for you. One time my makers called me ordinary. Ordinary. I’m healing right before your eyes and I’m ordinary. Isn’t that something?

“If you want, I can keep them there—”

Cigarette rolls up the sleeve of his flannel shirt to bare a series of old, misshapen burn scars dotting his entire arm and disappearing beneath the cuffed fabric. The skin’s pink and puckered and angry, even still. He laughs like glass shattering. 

“My stepdad gave me these. Been twenty-three years. Shit. How come I can’t make them go away?”

The cigarette on the inside of Theo’s elbow has burnt down to the filter. He tosses it onto the nightstand, and another one is pulled from the half-empty pack of Camels. Flame, cigarette, flesh, repeat until he’s thoroughly litter-skinned. They’re brothers in arms. 

Theo once considered himself beyond notions of fair and unfair, take what you get and deal with it sort of thing. Self-preservation; become detached from judgments of right and wrong and anything seems bearable. When he was young he wanted the world and when he grew he was expelled from it. 

He could bite the hand who dealt him these cards but he thinks he’d find his own fingers between his teeth. 

This—Cigarette holding out his own marred arm toward Theo’s recovering one, paying money to watch someone hurt and heal because he can’t do it on his own, leaving a motel room and going home and still being stuck with the scars and pain that lasts, a pain not of his own making—is unfair. 

An hour of this is far too long but Cigarette doesn’t stop until the clock tells him to. But when it does, he stands, rolls down his shirtsleeves, slides his box of Camel cigarettes into his jeans pocket, pulls out cash from his wallet and pays. Theo reaches out to accept the money and ash tumbles from his arm onto the carpet. 

He couldn’t bring his mouth to refuse the cash. Because he’s selfish. Because he’s a piece of shit. Because he’s bad in an ordinary way. Because even his empathy scabs over and flakes off until there’s none remaining. He’s sorry for it. 

The motel room door thuds shut. 

Theo is alone, six hundred dollars richer, and he’s sorry for all of it. 

⎶

Motel nights give him deadsleep. An utterly dark, dreamless void that only departs once the sun breaks and enters through his bedroom windows, caresses his eyelids, and asks him to do better today. His usual response is I’ll try, I will, but the moon makes an amnesiac out of him. 

He missed the wake-up call this morning, was roused instead by what sounds like an actual break-and-enterer. 

Theo’s a lump under the covers when the doorknob rattles once, twice, three times. His front door swings open. Footsteps follow, traipsing over the squeaky wood floor and drawing nearer. He sits up, heart beating like an alarm. Silent and rigid enough that even his breath decides to hold itself in an effort to smother all noise. Intruder’s not doing much to stay quiet, though. Trudges through the living room, pauses in the kitchen, continues down the hallway, and stops outside Theo’s room. The door creaks open. 

The trespasser is a fifteen-year-old werewolf wearing a concerned expression that’s entirely ill-fitting for someone who could’ve knocked first. 

“Alec, what the fuck,” Theo sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I thought someone was robbing me. How’d you get in here?” 

“I buzzed your apartment and texted you but you didn’t respond. So I buzzed a bunch of other apartments until someone finally let me in.” He holds up a warped bobby pin and a paperclip that’s been unfurled. “Then I picked your lock. And you can’t be mad about that, you’re the one who taught me how to do it.” 

He’s right, and Theo’s halfway proud about it. Shakes his head anyway and mutters, “Way to terrorize the whole building this early in the morning.” 

Alec doesn’t retort with any half-baked justification. Just deflates. His shoulders slump, expression deadening until his eyes weigh heavy enough on Theo that he’s gotta look away to survive them. 

He mumbles, “It’s twelve. We were supposed to go to breakfast, remember.” 

Theo blinks, remembers. Sunday. One free breakfast from the Pancake Hut—unfortunate name, their pancakes aren’t anything to write home about—with the sixteen-year-old werewolf with the dejected eyes and the birthday voucher he got for joining their mailing list clenched between his fist. They’d planned this weeks ago. Guilt’s a heavyweight gut-punch. 

“I didn’t forget. I just overslept, I’m sorry,” Theo says. He feels odd and careless sitting in bed for this conversation. He wants to pull back the covers and get out but he’s afraid of what else he might not have remembered. One night last week he’d trudged into his bedroom and passed out wearing a bloodstained t-shirt courtesy of Jackknife. Tainted the whole bed with his bad deeds; had to do a lot of laundry that day. 

“Nah, you forgot. I can tell. It’s fine,” Alec shrugs, like he’s not disappointment personified. “Shitty of you, but it’s fine.” 

The statement is dagger-sharp but well deserved. This is no laundry day but there’s a different type of cleanup to be done. 

“Give me five minutes, I’ll get dressed and we can go. Okay?” 

His voice verges on desperate, pleading. But he’s good at second chances. His life’s kinda depended on them. 

“Yeah, sure. I’ll wait out there,” Alec nods. He jabs his thumb in the direction of the living room and follows it. 

Theo isn’t entirely ill-prepared. Two weeks back he shelled out just under half a night’s paycheck to buy the VR headset Alec’s been running his mouth about for months.

Half a motel night’s paycheck. Would’ve been half a week’s paycheck from the Preserve. He doesn’t know why he’s rationalizing it that way. Like the money—the ability to drop a couple hundred on a birthday gift without it making a dent in his bank account whereas just over a year ago a roof over his head seemed out of reach—somehow makes it better. He gets hurt. People pay money to hurt him. He can do nice things because of it. Buy gifts and meals and nights without dreams. He gets hurt. And it’s not meaningless anymore. 

He multitasks by necessity, tugs on clothes and brushes his teeth and runs fingers through his hair until he approaches presentable. In the mirror, his face is dull and unremarkable. He looks watered down and entirely too tired for someone who slept just under ten hours. Dark circles, eyes the color of dying elm leaves. No wonder humans find him suitable to cut into and wholly unintimidating. He’s got the demeanor of a dog baring its underbelly in surrender. 

For his eighth birthday Theo went to one of those children’s play places. The ones with arcade games and animatronics and sketchy jungle gyms anchored to the ceiling. And he remembers walking up to the stage with the animatronics, remembers the way they looked when powered down in between sets. Hollow, deadened, waiting for a reason to perform. But, mostly, he remembers the way Tara claimed he disappeared for an hour inside of the playscape, even had their parents climbing in after him to join the search efforts, but he cannot recall it happening. Any of it. Trying to piece together the gaps makes his ears ring and teeth vibrate. Theo’s recollection of his own life is like swiss cheese. 

He does remember asking to never be taken there again, though. And memory doesn’t have to tell him that he didn’t disappear of his own volition. 

Theo stands up straighter, lifts his chin, and levels a self-assured look at his reflection. Like he’s been plugged in, turned on. Booted up and ready to perform. Happy fucking Birthday. 

⎶

“You know I definitely think this tops the list of best birthday presents I’ve ever gotten,” Alec says, clutching the unwrapped present to his chest with his free hand as he shovels a forkful of birthday cake waffles into his mouth. He chews once, twice, garbles out an appreciative, “You’ve outdone yourself, dude.” 

Theo grins wide and proud at the prospect of doing something right. Alec was little kid levels of elated opening his gift while they waited for their food. Ran his hands along the creases of the box and hugged it tight to his chest, flashed Theo a smile that showed nearly all his teeth. 

Alec intones, “But…there is something else I want.”

“Ungrateful much?” Theo snorts. “The clerk at the store tried pestering me into getting a $100 pair of headphones to go with it, did I fuck up by ignoring him?” 

“Nah, no, the headset’s perfect, I swear,” Alec insists, setting the box down in the booth’s empty space beside him. “I just…what I’d really like from you right now is the truth.” 

Little panic. Theo hides it behind a sip of water, sets down his glass and lets his smile stretch wider and tighter into something innocent and incredulous. He picks up a limp, greasy piece of bacon, drags it through a puddle of maple syrup on Alec’s plate, takes a bite and shrugs. 

“Not sure what you’re talking about,” he says. 

Alec crosses his arms over his chest, gives him his best stop-bullshittting-me look. If Theo didn’t know any better he’d think it was an impression of himself. 

“Alright, so maybe I forgot about breakfast, but—”

“I saw the enrollment papers on your counter earlier,” he blurts. “They weren’t even filled out. So, what, is that just an old copy that you never threw away for some reason or did you not submit them in the first place?” 

Theo stares. And maybe his expression is too blank and unknowing, because Alec elaborates. 

“For BC3? You said you were gonna get your gen-ed credits over with.” 

He nods, stabbing a chunk of scrambled egg with his fork. His eyes ping pong around the restaurant, landing anywhere but on Alec and the way his lips pull into a frown, how targeted his disappointment feels. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” 

Alec rolls his eyes, pushing his own plate away with a half-groan. “Theo, seriously, why’d you lie to me about that?” 

He wants to make a joke. The self-deprecating kind that Alec hates. Something like, because that’s what I do. But Alec wasn’t around for that version of him, every interaction a carefully planned deception. 

Or, maybe he was. Is. Theo’s just sloppier with his untruths lately. Like the skill of lying is akin to a muscle that atrophies without regular use. All of his words have grown weak and unconvincing to even himself. 

“I didn’t…I don’t know,” he says, brittle-voiced and quiet. Alec’s way too good at the stern look of a reproachful parent for his age, and Theo is ever the scolded child. “I just missed the enrollment date by accident. I didn’t want you to think I was just sitting around doing nothing.”

He scoffs. 

“Dude, I wouldn’t even care if you were playing video games all day—I mean, I might be kinda worried, mainly because you suck at video games and that’d be way out of character, but still,” he says, shrugging. “Do whatever the fuck you want, it’s your gap year. I’m just saying you don’t have to lie to me to make it seem like you have all your shit together. And that’s coming from someone who most definitely does not have their shit together.”

Their waitress comes and goes, refilling their glasses of water. Theo needs the pause. Gives him time to get his shit together. 

“Look, I’m not trying to be annoying or an asshole or whatever, but it’s like…I don’t know what’s going on with you lately.”

Theo’s the frowning one this time. But he doubles down. Because he’s good at digging himself graves. 

“Alec, there’s nothing going on—”

“And everyone else sees it too.” 

He stills. Asks, “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Alec clams up, jaw clicking shut. He drags his fork around the puddles of syrup and funfetti icing on his plate, avoiding Theo’s shard-sharp gaze. Theo hates the scraping sound. Hates Alec’s reticent expression. Hates the tightness in his chest. 

He half-shrugs, mumbles, “You just don’t seem like yourself. I don’t know.” 

And, well, Theo thinks he’s been more himself lately than ever, really. Living the life he always has lived. Not the make-believe one of a regular teenager doing regular things, playing normal boy and pretending there’s a happy ending waiting for him somewhere. 

Instead he recedes into the echo chamber of his own body, which is to say, decades of touch reverberate within him. Theo wants the outside to affirm what’s inside. Like seeking out eager-to-harm hands makes his warring inner life more understandable. Pain makes sense once you’ve given your body a reason to feel it. 

“You can’t just say that and not tell me what you mean,” Theo says. His voice carries more frustration than he’d like it to, but nowadays when it comes to matters of the self, he’d like to be in control. Shape his own narrative. 

Alec shrinks. Goes wilted and apprehensive. 

“I mean…you’re being secretive. And distant, too. And I don’t get it.” 

He doesn’t say it like a statement of fact, but like he’s personally hurt by the observation. Theo thinks he’d rather be a liar than a bad friend. Now he’s both. He feels unplugged. Powered down. Happy Birthday. Maybe he can get Alec to promise to never return here—to this topic of conversation—again, and forget all about it later. 

“And, what, now you’re just going off on hunter intel missions on your own?” Alec continues, picking up steam. “That’s reckless, Theo, even by your standards.” 

Eggs and bacon and waffles have congealed into a rock sunk deep in his gut. He asks, “How’d you even find out about that?” 

“See, that’s what I’m talking about!” 

Alec’s face carries the look of a growl but he doesn’t give sound to his anger. The remainders of Theo’s eggs have turned to a pale yellow mush beneath the weight of his fork. They’re not appetizing anymore. He can’t unruin them nor this outing. 

And himself. No, he can’t unruin that either. 

Alec lowers his voice to add, “Hunters are a pack issue, you’re supposed to communicate that stuff to us. And even if they weren’t a threat, I’d wanna know about it because I’m your friend. Not hear about it from Liam, who you apparently didn’t tell either since he had to find out from Parrish.” 

Little circles of conversation around Theo that don’t involve him directly. Hot gossip, he is. It’s easier to convince himself that he’s a point of contention rather than grapple with the fact that he is deeply cared about. 

“So you’re saying you don’t trust me,” he states. Flat. Faux-unaffected. 

“God, it’s like you miss the point on purpose,” Alec sighs. “I’m saying you’re acting like you don’t trust us.”

Theo thinks he trusts them, the pack, too much, really. He’s not one for moral beliefs but his faith in their commitment to looking after those they consider their own is unshakeable. It’s why he’s gotta keep secrets. Because otherwise they’d do something about it. About him. 

Cognitive dissonance. He’s willing to open his body up to strangers but he doesn’t think he can bare the reason behind it to any of his friends. Can’t be vulnerable in that way. Honesty is a wound that doesn’t heal. 

“It’s not like that,” he mumbles.

“Then what is it like, Theo.” 

He offers only silence. 

Alec huffs out a dry, disappointed laugh. Theo hates the sound. 

“Thanks for the gift,” he says, eyes scanning the restaurant to wave over the waitress. He pulls his birthday breakfast voucher from his pocket, spends time reading the fine print so he doesn’t have to look at Theo. 

“I, um. I’ve got brownie mix at home. Ghirardelli brand, so it’s like the luxury vehicle of boxed brownies, I think,” Theo remarks, tentative and apologetic. “Ice cream, too, if you wanna come over. Maybe we can fuck around with that thing.” 

He gestures to the box beside Alec. The only thing redeeming this day. 

Alec gives a stiff grin that’s closer to a grimace. “I would, but Melissa’s actually doing a whole birthday dinner thing later, so. Her and Chris, you know. Malia’s gonna stop by. You should come, too.” 

Theo’s mouth parts, then closes, then parts again. His silence stutters. 

“You know what, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” Alec shrugs. His heartbeat skips. Even his lying is honest. “Raincheck on the brownies, though. You still owe me them.” 

⎶

The Dread Doctors used to move Theo through time. And by that, he means he’d be cut open on an operating table in one moment, hear their frequency-hum the next, and wake up somewhere else entirely with no recollection of the passage of time nor the chain of events. Just him, put back together, standing on bare feet before prey, imbued with power hidden from even himself. Lost hours, sometimes days. 

The Subject. That’s what they called him in the records they kept, back when he was the first. Transplant of heart into the Subject successful. Levels of Argent Vive in the Subject stable. The Subject shows signs of dual-species acquisition. 

The Subject is boy no longer, monster forever. 

The frequencies used to sound like the wings of a million flies beating in tandem. Theo remembers this lying prone on a tarp while his abdomen is carefully split wide open by a scalpel, baring his insides. Two cold hands flatten themselves on either side of the incision and stretch the wound outward. There is a gnat sluggishly crawling along the lampshade to his right, but it’s too small and slow to make any noise. Theo feels like he lost all logical grasp of time, wants to know how he ended up here. Not here, room 209, with his guts on display. But here, a broken record of a boy spending months repeating the worst of his self-history. No difference between nine and nineteen. 

This guy’s no doctor. His hands shake with either excitement or uncertainty like he’d built up some incredible idea of the human body in his mind and has no idea what to do with one when it’s splayed out in front of him. Sloppy vivisection. He pauses to inspect his work. The sight of blood makes his pants tight. 

Theo is accustomed to being wanted, but not like this. Maybe his body’s telling Scalpel something he can’t hear. He hooks fingers on the inside of the long incision running down Theo’s center and yanks outward until he’s all open and inviting like a Valentine’s card. Blood is red and guts are pink and all we really are are walking, organ-filled water balloons. 

Theo has sprung a leak. 

His healing’s not all that good, really. Not real-werewolf-good. Not good enough that he can sit back and be careless while someone hacks into him. He can’t afford to be passive in this no matter how badly he wants to. Theo won’t offer much praise to his makers. And he can’t say they cared. He’s not naive. But his survival benefited them, so they kept him alive. 

He cannot say the same about a blood-hungry human with a wallet full of cash and a secret hidden behind a flimsy door. They don’t look out for him that way, so Theo looks out for himself. Counts his heartbeat to occupy his mind while his half-lidded eyes follow the minute hand on the wall clock. Tries to stay grounded in his body. Cold extremities, lethargy, dry mouth, elevated pulse. Pumps the brakes at the first sign of wooziness—

He lost count. Eyes drifted away from the clock. Multitasking is strenuous. He spares a glance downward and can’t discern between skin, muscle, and organ through the lake of red that’s formed. His head gets light. He hears vibration that he thinks might be that frequency hum, thinks that they’re moving him through time again but his head lolls to the side and it’s just his phone ringing on the nightstand. No fly wings. A bloodstained hand guides his chin back to center. Scalpel wants to look at him and be looked at. Theo forgot that he’s playing the role of service provider, not cadaver. 

Scalpel sticks his hand in Theo’s abdomen wrist-deep. Bile rises in his throat as if he could expel the innard-poking with one good retch. Theo half-expects him to pull out an organ like one of those rabbit in a hat magic acts. Or make balloon animals out of his guts. And for my next trick: massive hemorrhaging. Blood coats Scalpel’s hand like a glove. 

“Stop,” Theo mumbles. 

He wonders if he accidentally said it’s okay, you don’t have to before that and just didn’t hear it over the heartbeat in his ears. Heartbeat. He forgot to keep track. The clock makes him anxious. There’s a scalpel inside of him but he can’t see where. He’s dizzy because he’s panicking but he’s panicking because he’s dizzy. He used to be better at this. Offering up his body like a game of Operation and not batting an eye at the warning signs it gave him. They’re just nerve signals. Information. The body’s way of talking to the brain. Drowsiness, clammy hands, shallow breathing, sticky thoughts. 

His body is real chatty right now. 

“Y’gotta stop,” he says. “Please.”

His voice is hoarse and pleading, but Scalpel doesn’t listen to him. Theo asked for help once. Yelled it, really. Different point in time than now. He remembers that. No one listened to him then either. No one ever listens to him. Not unless he forces them to. 

The phone on the nightstand vibrates again, a call. He glances over, the contact photo is a familiar face. L-I-A-M. That’s a name he’s allowed to remember but it doesn’t belong here. The phone keeps vibrating. His mind swims. When it comes up for air he’s in the same place. The animals inside of him stalk their cages. Failsafe. 

Theo goes monster-bodied, eyes rimmed with gold as his canines jut past his lips. The hands lying limply by his sides grow claws. They’re more than scalpel-sharp. The man above him recoils, but doesn’t back away entirely. Theo is instinct-minded, blindly kicks him away and lands a heel square in the center of his gut. Scalpel doubles over and curses him. Theo holds an arm over his exposed abdomen, protective motion. The same way his mom used to hold an arm out as a barrier whenever he’d walk too close to the stove. He doesn’t remember her face, the Dread Doctors might have taken that memory away from him for good, but he remembers her arm. 

Theo thinks he growled, if Scalpel’s fear-tinged expression is anything to go by. His instrument is left behind on the tarp between Theo’s legs. He picks it up and wields it like a threat, like he needs more than fangs and claws to trigger human fight-or-flight. Scalpel picks flight. Tugs on his coat as if his life depends on it. His wallet tumbles out of the pocket and onto the floor, too close to the bed and the monster on top of it for comfort. There’s a standoff. Scalpel’s hands twitch by his side and Theo’s, they just shake. They won’t stop shaking. Theo retrieves it, slow in this, because leaning downward and sitting back up puts black spots in his vision. His insides press up against his arm, making an attempt at becoming escape artists. His arm presses harder against the wound, tells his guts to learn their place. Pain rattles him. Theo leaves bloody fingerprints all over the leather as he opens the wallet and plucks out the row of hundreds folded inside to add to the half that was already paid. A tip. 

He tosses the wallet back, it lands at Scalpel’s feet. He’s cautious in picking up the wallet, but quick to leave. Scrambles outside stained in Theo’s blood, doesn’t close the door, and Theo hates him for it. For giving the whole world the chance to see him in all of his pathetic glory. He has to clamber off the bed with a fistful of money in one hand and an exposed stomach in the other to throw himself up against the door and shut it. 

That’s a mistake. He dripped all over the beige carpet on the walk over from the bed. Smeared more of himself on the wall trying to stay steady. His legs want to give up on him but he can’t let them. He careens toward the bathroom, and makes a crime scene out of the white countertop. There aren’t any cleaning supplies in the cabinets. Just bar soap, a drinking glass covered in a thin film of dust, scratchy towels, and a travel-sized bottle of amber-colored shower gel. Theo lays down because he doesn’t know how to fix this. Any of it. He’s a mess of his own making. Outside the bathroom, his phone vibrates again. It’s too loud. He closes his eyes. 

Liam once said Theo was the most put-together person he knew. It wasn’t supposed to be a joke, but Theo thinks this—him, here, now—is the punchline. Cue percussive sting. Cue laughtrack. 

It takes a lengthy spell on the tiled floor to right himself. Theo’s body is still angry with him about being ignored, so it chooses to be lazy in holding itself together. He ties a towel around his midsection to staunch the bleeding but dyes it red by the time he stumbles to the front of the room with soap and a glass of water regardless. He wipes the wall with a wet towel and erases himself. Scrubs at the carpet, gets it all sudsy and damp but a faint rusty stain clings to the fibers. Looking at it makes him nauseous, but that might be the blood loss. 

He stands. Sways. Pulls on his pants. The world tilts. He sits on the edge of the bed and stains the back of his jeans with blood. Spares a glance over his shoulder and wishes he didn’t. The tarp is a mess. Blood’s pooled in the center of it with a few steady streams following the curve of the bed and trickling onto the carpet below. Little puddles stain the floor by his feet. Theo places his head between his knees, tries to make breathing an automatic thing again, but all that does is invert the world and disturb the large incision that’s trying to heal. 

He stays there and leaks and wonders if his older sister dying young makes him an older brother. He’s been walking forward through life looking for footsteps to follow in. From his experience, the only way out this life is down. 

Theo shakes his mind ghost-free, a manual reboot. He staggers to the other side of the room, and pulls on his t-shirt. It’s grey, soon to be stained red at its center. He grabs his phone—three missed calls. One from Liam. Two from his boss. Two texts. One from Liam. Another from his boss. 

His stomach goes rock-heavy with dread. He’d been scheduled for a night shift at the Preserve. Funny how memory decides to kick in only after it’s left you high and dry. 

The message from his boss he doesn’t quite read from start to finish. It’s less of a text and more of a letter. His mind’s half-fogged over and his eyes decide to spare him the bulk of the disappointed words; instead they jump around from “no-call, no-show” to “not meeting expectations” then “abandonment of position” and “removing you from the schedule” to finish on, “Unfortunately, I have to let you go effective immediately.” 

He gets the gist even though incoherence tempts him. He only had one strike. He thought he was good at second chances. 

Theo could apologize, maybe, but doesn’t think he’ll get forgiven. He doesn’t know if he’s ever really been forgiven before. Nightstand bible. It’s tempting but he’s not in the mood for fairytales. 

There’s a knock on the door. He can’t remember if he booked someone else, recollection is a vacuum. Doesn’t want to answer the door because he knows he won’t turn the client on the other side of it down. Not because of money-panic, but because he thinks his makers put that kind of submission in him on purpose. To inflict pain one must first know it. Theo’s not sure he has ever said no to a bad hand. 

The knocking is ceaseless and demanding. Housekeeping, maybe, but they don’t tend to come around until the daytime hours. Motel management would be worse. He rented the room for the night but Scalpel could’ve gone to the front desk and ratted him out, claimed he was the attackee rather than attacker. 

He ambles over to the door, pulls it open, and greets the outside world with a put-upon air of nonchalance until his eyes land on Sheriff Stilinski and Deputy Parrish. Their eyes don’t follow the pattern he’s used to, not face, neck, one arm, the other, chest, stomach, and down. Instead they elude any pretenses of a coincidental visit. They land somewhere over his shoulder—in the room with the bloody tarp and the red-tinged towels, and the stained carpet, and all the shit he can’t hide, not from them—then drift back to Theo. Down to his shirt where the faintest hints of a wound have begun to peek through. He holds himself still and breathless as if a single exhale will blow this situation into something unfixable. 

“Theo,” Stilinski greets, stiffly polite. Parrish won’t look at him. Just sets his jaw as his eyes bounce around and linger past Theo’s shoulder. 

He offers a stilted nod in response. Shifts on his feet and makes himself larger in the doorway, an attempt to conceal any collateral damage beyond his own body. Two doors down, a nosy neighbor sticks her head out of the door to her room for unsubtle eavesdropping. On the other side of her on the balcony, a man lights up a cigarette. The smoke and his attention drifts in their direction. 

“Mind coming down to the station and answering some questions for us?”

The words imply choice but his tone carries the weight of a demand. Theo squirms. It’s cool outside. Goosebumps bud along his arms. He looks between Parrish and Stilinski trying to figure out which one’s good cop and which is bad but they both blur together. His eyes kaleidoscope. 

“S’this an arrest?” he asks. Hears the slur in his own voice. His tongue trips over syllables and he can’t help but wince at it. “Am I being arrested?” 

“It doesn’t have to be like that if you just come with us,” Parrish says, exasperated in a gentle way. 

“What if I say no.” 

Stilinski takes a step forward. “How about you just get into the cruiser, Theo.” 

Watered down bad cop, then. He exhales, slow and heavy. Thinks about crying but his stomach wound does it for him. 

Sheriff Stilinski pivots to face Parrish. He lowers his voice into a whisper as if Theo’s not two fucking feet away. As if he can’t hear the way he asks Parrish to clear the room while he takes Theo to the police station. 

Parrish nods, turns back to Theo, and asks, “Do you have the keys to your truck?”

“I drove here,” he answers. He meant for the response to be more biting, but it comes out hollow and confused instead. 

“Okay. Go on with the Sheriff. I’ll drive it to the station for you, alright?” Parrish says. He’s got the voice of a person talking to a spooked animal or a man on a ledge. It’s uncomfortably coddling and unfamiliar. 

Theo can’t do much else than nod, numb in this. He reaches a trembling hand down into his pocket to pull out his key. A crumpled wad of bloodstained bills comes out with it, tumbles to the ground before Theo can stop it. He pitches forward, snatching it up and sliding it back into his pocket, but the motion doesn’t go unnoticed. The pain makes him breathless. Parrish takes the keys, but not before his face briefly contorts into something sad and pitying. 

Gawker number one scutters inside her room as they pass by on their way to the steps. Number two just takes another puff from his cigarette and watches them go with a detached sort of interest in his eyes. Glad-it’s-not-me expression on his face. Stilinski shields Theo from their view on the way down to the parking lot. He doesn’t say anything, just opens the back door and closes it once Theo’s settled. When they take off, he almost parts his lips to announce he forgot to return the room key. He bites his tongue instead, doesn’t think it matters much now. 

The Sheriff’s eyes meet Theo’s in the rearview mirror. His forehead creases, lines drawn tight around his temples, then he turns his gaze back out onto the road with a sigh like the mere sight of Theo hurts. He gets it. His reflection looks pale, tired, and lost. It’s not something he can look too long at either. 

Stilinski drives without the sirens on. The procession of streetlights whizzing by outside the window bathe the back of the cruiser in incandescent light, then night cloaks it in shadow during the lampless stretches in between. He wants to slip down in his seat, plaster himself against the upholstery where only shadows can find him. Theo’s shirt goes sticky with the healing efforts hidden underneath. In the bursts of silence when the police scanner goes dead and dull, he can hear his skin knitting itself back together. He considers napping, but wants to gather his thoughts ahead of a potential interrogation. Make himself clear-headed and coherent again. His phone vibrates. 

Switchblade:

-are you working tonight ? 

Sometimes, life holds you down and offers you lemons only to squeeze their juice into all the wounds it’s given you, pats you on the back afterwards and asks if you’re still in the mood for lemonade. 

⎶

Theo warms his hands around a steaming mug and folds himself into something small and unassuming in the leather chair across from Sheriff Stilinski’s desk. He’d asked if he could get Theo anything and instead of “out of here” Theo said coffee. The smell alone makes him more alert. He takes a sip, singes his tongue, takes a bigger one that burns the whole way down. Stilinski watches Theo like he just can’t figure him out, searching for malice or ill-intent in his expression. 

There isn’t any, really. Not unless it’s self-directed. 

“You know, Jordan came to me with a few concerns a couple weeks back,” he says. “I didn’t think much of it. I’ve never fully managed to get a good grasp of where pack-related matters end and my jurisdiction begins.” 

Theo’s fingers tighten around the mug. The coffee tastes burnt and leaves grounds between his teeth. Beside his left knee there’s a tear in the leather. Matted cotton fibers spew from the rip. 

“But last Wednesday we had to go through a week’s worth of the motel’s security footage for another case. Seven days, about a hundred-seventy hours of people coming and going. You were in that tape as least four or five times, Theo,” Stilinski divulges, lips pressed in a thin line. He leans forward on his elbows and draws his brows down into a skeptical expression. “Not many people hang around the Fairview unless they’re looking for trouble or running from it, son.” 

Theo stays tight-lipped and silent. He tries to remember how much cash is in the envelopes hidden in his dresser drawer. Wonders how long he’ll be able to make rent living off dirty money until he’s gotta find a new job. 

Sheriff continues, “Now, I’m not accusing you of anything, but I think that scene we walked into said plenty.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Theo says, but even the words themselves are waving white flags, convictionless. Stilinski narrows his eyes, mouth half-parted in disbelief, and it’s such a Stiles expression that it briefly disarms him. He drums his fingers against the desk, channeling his impatience into his hands. His eyes flit down toward Theo’s stained shirt and back up. 

“You’re sitting here in front of me looking like death warmed over, alright? All I want is an explanation.”

“What did the tapes tell you?” Theo deflects.  

“Not much more beyond what parking space you tend to choose,” Stilinski shrugs. “I can wait until Parrish returns and summarizes what the property cameras couldn’t show us. But I’d prefer to hear the truth from your mouth first.” 

Truth. Always that word. 

Theo downs the rest of the coffee and sets the mug on the desk, silently wishing it’ll leave rings. He revokes that thought, though, because Stilinski isn’t really all that bad. Not stained-desk-out-of-spite bad. And this is the least abrasive interaction he’s had tonight. 

“Hope I didn’t distract you from your other case.”

The Sheriff waves the statement away.

“It’s closed now. But this one,” he gestures between Theo and himself, “isn’t. We got a call about a werewolf attack at the motel earlier.” 

Icing, meet cake. Shame presses anvil-heavy against his chest. 

“Now, imagine our confusion when we approach the front desk clerk and she says nothing out of the ordinary has happened that night. Didn’t hear a thing. Werewolf attacks, as far as I can tell, aren’t normally a quiet affair.” 

Protests of self-defense clog Theo’s throat. So a human and a chimera walk away from a motel room, and only one of them is bleeding. There’s no punchline to this one. He supposes notions of self-protection invalidate themselves once he’s made a hobby out of being a vessel for pain. 

Something inside of him shudders. He’d held his world together so carefully, resisted this routine’s collapse with every lie, deflection, avoidance tactic tucked beneath his tongue. Built a reputation off of being compliant, of having teeth yet never biting. Danger masquerading itself as docility in an almost-human body. All of it toppled by one bad night. 

Make a mountain out of shit and someone’s gonna walk by and smell it eventually. 

“So we thank her for her time, and—”

“I don’t need the whole narrative, Sheriff,” Theo mumbles. “You can skip to the part that involves me.” 

Stilinski purses his lips, gives a short nod. 

“Odd thing about the call was that there was no victim to be found. We ended up having to turn the paramedics on duty away. Afterwards, we did a walk around the property and found blood on the staircase railing, so—”

“I followed the scent to your room,” Parrish interrupts, stepping into the office and shutting the door behind him. Theo cranes his neck to look at him. 

He’s a sight. His uniform is littered in rust-colored stains like the aftermath of one of those splatter-slasher films. It makes Theo’s stomach churn. He’s not used to seeing his carnage worn on someone else’s body. He wonders if Parrish tried folding up the tarp while the blood was still on it. Bad move. It’s easier to sop up the mess with towels first and then rinse everything off in the shower. 

Parrish drags an armchair from the far corner of Stilinski’s office over to the desk. He sits, says, “You know what happened next.” 

Time poking. Memory prodding. Haphazard clean-up. Phone ringing. Knock at the door. Indecent him. Unrelenting them. 

“But we need to know what happened before, Theo.” 

He doesn’t know what that means. Before. Time tires him. 

Before he followed the kudzu vines trying to learn what direction felt like, before crossing the graduation stage, before he learned a purposeful life through risking his own, before his violence above ground put him below ground, before he became unrecognizable to even himself on an operating table, before he decided to visit a bridge with his sister. 

Before all of that, he was a kid. 

But, tonight, he was a phony monster. Scary in the way of caged animals with no choice other than to gnaw at the grates of their captivity. Scalpel made a hazy mess of him. He said stop. When he was eight he used to crawl into his parents’ bed sobbing out nonsense about men in masks coming to his room. They told him he was too old to make up stories. He doesn’t know why no one ever listens to him. 

Parrish, Stilinski, they’re quiet, soft-eyed, and expectant. Theo knows they’ll wait here all night for an answer if they need to. He decides to spoon-feed them his honesty. Maybe it’ll be more palatable that way. 

“I haven’t hurt anyone.”

“Okay,” Sheriff Stilinski nods. His posture loosens up, something like finally, we’re getting somewhere. He jerks his chin in the direction of Scalpel’s leftovers. Healed now, mostly. Just tender and begging not to be touched. “How’d that happen?” 

Theo’s jaw clicks shut. He sits in a hermetically-sealed silence. He doesn’t want to lie. But offering up that information would be traversing the truth without training wheels. 

Parrish clears his throat, says, “There was a scalpel left behind in the room. And plastic sheeting over the bed covered in blood. The comforter and pillows had been removed. I could go on, but I mean…whatever it was, Theo, it looked premeditated.” 

It’s a prompt. They’ll outline the picture so that all he’ll have to do is color it in. 

“Maybe this is…look, I don’t know the extent of your relationship with the Dread Doctors,” he sighs, brows drawing together. “If, somehow, they’ve returned…or you’re covering for them—”

“No,” Theo chokes out. “That’s not—they’re gone.” 

His voice plunges into desperation with the statement. Like he needs to believe it just as much as they do. 

The Dread Doctors are permanent visitors in his memories these days. What he wanted from his gap year was a pause, time to breathe. What he got was time to think. He started remembering and couldn’t stop. Thoughts, those have inertia. They pick up momentum and build off of one another until he’s backed into a corner of his own mind. Until he takes walks to lose time. 

“Okay. Right. They’re gone,” Parrish says. Theo can’t tell whether he means it as agreement or reassurance, but the response’s certitude loosens fear’s chokehold on him. 

But they’re right back where they started. Theo, unyielding. Stilinski, Parrish, unknowing.

“If there’s something we can do to help, we want to do it, you understand?” Sheriff Stilinski stresses. “But I’m gonna need you to be a little more forthcoming with information. You’re not giving us very much to work with here.” 

Their faces are tinged with thinly-veiled frustration. Theo wonders if liar-him was more tolerable than this late-blooming, fumblingly honest version of himself. At least then they didn’t have to pretend to care. 

“I get paid for it,” he admits. He takes a breath, molds his face into something impassive as he motions at his bloodstained shirt. “For this. Monroe made humans curious, I think. Curious about what we can do.” 

Stilinski frowns, the expression etched deep into his face. 

“People pay to hurt you?”

A nod. A hesitant one. 

It’s not about him. He’s sure any body would do. Theo has seen Liam bash his fists against stone when he wanted instead to break them against unwilling cheekbones. Not everyone has restraint. People like rage with a target. Theo makes for a good target, always has. 

So, what he means is, these people—all those pent up assholes that think about driving their steak knife through their spouse’s neck at dinner, the type of folk who get cut off by a Prius on the highway and picture rear-ending the vehicle into a brick wall till it crumples like a soda can—need him. And Theo is good when he’s needed. 

The form his help has taken is no surprise, really. Violence has inertia, too. It’s been orbiting his life for a decade. Never left, has only ever been redirected. 

Parrish’s eyes flit over to Stilinski and back. “And the hunters…”

“Made up.” 

Theo can see it, the way their trust splinters. Suspicion pulls them in one direction and compassion in another. 

“Not even broaching how illegal what you’re doing is, this isn’t okay, Theo. You understand that, right? I mean, you’ve been hiding it, so you must,” Parrish chides. He smells like a forest after a fire. Angry. Theo’s surprised he hasn’t gone up in flames. “You could get hurt. Seriously hurt. And, frankly, I’m concerned about what made you even think it’d be reasonable to engage in this.”  

He doesn’t get it. “Could get hurt.” Like that’s supposed to be a deterrent. Humans last year took up arms and acted as a dilettante militia in the face of beasts. The threat of harm doesn’t stop anyone in Beacon Hills. At least Theo makes his undoing profitable. Pain is just a body’s way of announcing that something is wrong. Theo has been well-aware of his inner wrongness long before having it revealed beneath a blade in a motel room. 

Nevertheless, the statement doesn’t give Theo much wriggle room. So he stays quiet.

Stilinski scrubs a hand over his face, asks, “Are you…having trouble supporting yourself? I know money can be a sensitive topic, alright, but if you’re struggling to make ends meet working at—you’re still at the Preserve, right?” 

Theo’s head bobs instinctually. Then he remembers, and shakes his head instead. YesNo. It cancels itself out, a non-answer. 

“Regardless, there’s no shame in asking for help,” he continues, voice lowered into a sympathetic register. “Listen, we haven’t always been on the best terms, but I want you to know that if you need—”

“No, I’m fine. Really. Thanks,” Theo mumbles. He could’ve used the offer back when his backseat was a bed and Sheriff’s deputies were on a crusade against the crime of his homelessness. He wouldn’t have accepted it, but the sentiment would’ve been nice. 

He’s made roughly $500 an hour, give or take—mostly give—working the motel gig, versus $14 an hour at the Preserve. One grand for two hours of staying still. Prior to this, he worked his way through senior year, hasn’t tasted the coppery bite of money-hunger in a while, now. He’s not enclosing himself between four walls with strangers for financial stability, although that’s just as good a reason as any, he supposes. Familiarity is what he’s starved of. 

His life has changed more in the past year than it has in the decade prior. He’s falling into old routines. Pliant body, dissection specimen. Too pathetic to admit out loud. To be given freedom and drag himself right back, tail tucked between his legs, into the trap of bodily subjection because he doesn’t know what to do with it. 

Theo is hot with embarrassment at the thought. He never could’ve been The Beast. He was designed to be a loyal lapdog. 

“Is someone forcing you to do this?”

His eyes cut over to Parrish and narrow. He doesn’t like the question. Feels like turning a mirror on himself and being asked to reckon with his own reflection. His composure is eggshell thin; they’re chipping away at it. Theo’s not sure how much longer he’ll be able to hold. 

“Forcing me?” He laughs. Or he tries to. His throat constricts, and whatever comes out is harsh, grating, all wrong. “I just made $750 lying there while a guy opened me up and looked at my organs.” 

His voice cuts. Wet heat builds behind his eyes. It’s just pent-up truth. If he keeps his mouth running maybe it won’t leak out of anywhere else. 

Truth. They asked for this. 

“I‘ve been doing that since I was a kid for free.” 

The words hit air and taste like sour regret. Theo wants to undo them. His hands ball into fists at his sides, helpless to fix it. Blunt nails dig crescent moons into his palms as self-reprimand. 

Stilinski and Parrish have gone stunned and silent. Too much listening. Maybe, Theo thinks, people shouldn’t listen to him so much. Maybe there’s a reason he tries to discredit himself with lies. He doesn’t like the way their eyes have gone wide and mournful. 

“It’s not what it sounds like. It’s a service. This is—it’s a good thing, okay? I do it because someone has to,” he insists, hysteric edge to his voice. Martyring himself toward redemption. Every time he heals he is healing himself into something better. He thinks he is. He hopes he is. “Some of the clients, they’re loose cannons. I’m just trying to protect people. They probably would’ve hurt someone else if I hadn’t offered—”

“Christ, Theo. Are you listening to yourself right now?”

Sheriff Stilinski’s voice is raised, a broken sort of anger. He presses his palms against his eye sockets and takes a slow, deep breath. Theo looks over at Parrish but he won’t meet his eyes. Just keeps staring down at his boots, jaw clenched. 

This was a series of missteps. Altruism isn’t believable coming from his mouth. He should’ve claimed the violence as his own. Owned up to the attack at the motel, acted as monster-him would’ve. Wouldn’t have been on the receiving end of sad looks face-to-face that way. Just I-knew-I-was-right-about-you expressions between the bars of a jail cell, probably. 

Memory lies, tells him that if he could do everything over he’d make it better this time. Hindsight isn’t 20/20. Not really. It’s fogged over in a hazy nostalgia for even the worst moments. 

“How long?” Sheriff asks. 

Theo lifts his head in question. 

“How long have you been doing this for?” Parrish elaborates on his behalf. He’s stiff, hollow-voiced. Looks at Theo like it hurts to do so. 

Things were slow at first. Once every other week or so. But a drip, turned trickle, became a stream. He learned his blood, his pain, they have use-values. 

“Four months.” 

Now, he’d need floodgates to hold back the outlet-needy humans breathing down his neck. 

Stilinski lets out a harsh exhale that would’ve sounded like a laugh were there any humor in it. Clucks his tongue once, and fiddles with the Sheriff badge pinned to his uniform. 

“I dedicated my life to keeping the people of Beacon Hills safe twenty-five years ago. Now, I’m not perfect, but I always thought I did a pretty damn decent job of it despite this town’s track record. I was wrong,” he says, shoulders slumping. If Stiles knew Theo put this despairing look on his father’s face he’d hate him for it. Hate him for this even more than for everything else he did, probably. 

“I’m sorry that I failed you.” 

The connotation of failure is heavy, it brands, and it’s final. Theo’s gutted. Sheriff Stilinski doesn’t deserve to bear the weight of his own choices. He’s claiming the role of bad cop but not in the way Theo expected. 

He shakes his head, dislodging appeasing, reassuring words. 

“But you didn’t—”

Stilinski raises a hand, halting his protests. His palm falls flat against the desk with a dull thud. He sighs, “I’m going to need a list of names, Theo.” 

His voice is small, nearing apologetic when he says, “I don’t remember any.” 

It wouldn’t make a difference even if he did. They’ll still harbor an appetite for ruin and he’ll still deliberately freefall toward whatever might hurt him at terminal velocity. These are things that cannot be removed from someone once the seed has been planted and watered with blood. 

“I’m at a loss,” Sheriff Stilinski mutters. “Theo, I don’t want to have to arrest you to keep you safe.” 

“Then don’t.” 

The office goes stale and musty like rotting wood. It’s the scent of giving up. 

⎶

At home, Theo sits upright atop the bedsheets in his dark, godless room avoiding sleep out of fear that he’ll wake up remade. 

He got a police escort to the apartment complex. Parrish in a squad car trailing him on the drive back to his place, because honesty doesn’t equate to trust. Shame alone would be enough to keep him inside for the night, but he supposes Parrish needed further proof. Needed to reconcile his guilt with action.

Theo is home, but he doesn’t feel it. He draws his knees in toward his chest, wraps his arms around them and holds himself together by the wrists. Makes restraints out of his hands so they don’t betray him. 

Tara used to do that. Wrap her fingers around Theo’s wrist and squeeze. She’d pull her hand back and watch the blanched handprints slowly fade from his skin. Let me mark you, she’d say. Afterward she would hold out her wrist for him to do the same but Theo had small hands and poor grip strength then. He couldn’t leave a good impression on anyone even if he wanted to. 

Scalpel’s dig-site has healed over but the rot beneath it is unrecoverable. He keeps his phone out of reach because otherwise he thinks he might send an apology text for the bad impression the encounter must’ve left. If he closes his eyes and stays very still he thinks he can feel a decade of fingers beneath his skin. He’s been marked beyond repair. People have put their hands inside him and he is losing against the urge to open himself up to get a closer look at all the fingerprints they must’ve left behind.  

He reaches for his phone instead, muscle-memorying himself in the direction of comfort, searching for hope in the low, ringing tone. There’s a click, then a breath, and—

“Liam?” he whispers, tentative, like he’s half-convinced it would be better for his voice to be lost to radiowave static rather than be heard for the wreck it is. 

“Hey,” Liam greets, all breezy and light and himself. “I called you earlier, but you must’ve been working. What’s up?” 

His hands clench around the sheets. Moonlight slanting through the blinds reveals the dried blood beneath his fingernails. He spent half an hour in the shower and still came out unclean. Theo’s mouth parts, but something choked and upset tries to escape, so he shuts it. Presses his face hard against his knees until his eyes ache just so there’s a reason for their watering. 

“Theo? Is everything alright?” 

“I’m not sure,” he says. “I don’t. I don’t know. I think I fucked up, Liam.” 

He meant to say, I think I’m fucked up, but his tongue diverted his brain’s attempt at admitting imperfection because to be deficient is to be a failure. Big difference between making a mistake and being one. 

His voice sounds waterlogged, rough. He hates it. Theo sniffs, clamps down on his lower lip to stop its trembling. He lays down, pushing his phone to the other side of the bed like a couple feet of distance will muffle his discomposure. When he closes his eyes, Liam’s panic-laced—are you okay?—sounds like it’s right in front of him. 

“Yes.” 

A beat. He stares down at his hands, eyes trailing the creases of his palms looking for seams. Somewhere to unstitch, a place to pull his skin back and step outside of himself. Be for once unburdened by his body. 

“No.”

Defeat saps all of his energy, tires him marrow-deep. Side effect of amateur phlebotomy. 

“Not really.” 

⎶

They pretended their way through Thanksgiving dinner, Liam and Theo. He ate slices of turkey and plastered a grin on his face while Liam spooned cranberry sauce onto his plate and feigned normalcy. Liam batted away his parents’ questions about what Theo had been up to, where he’d been hiding—deflecting with chatter about his own time away at school—like the slightest mention of the past few months could’ve been enough to send Theo over the edge. Preemptive damage control. 

That night on the phone, a couple weeks back, they talked. The dam in Theo’s chest broke, and everything horrible and hidden spewed out. A leftover hand clenched somewhere inside of him, squeezed all the words to the surface. Kudzu, motel, small rooms, violent hands, memory’s fingers, human hunger, a cop car without sirens. 

“Theo.” 

That’s all Liam had said, initially. An airless half-gasp, like Theo’s honesty had punched it out of him. Liam’s guilt-filled silence bore the question what is it that you’re trying to accomplish? And Theo’s breath answered carving space for myself in this world. And the radiowave static asked how are you doing that? And Theo’s body answered by letting the world carve space into me. 

“Sorry.” 

For the burden. Knowledge wounds. 

“It’s okay. I mean, it’s not. But don’t be, it’s not like—you don’t have to apologize.” 

Liam is Liam. He’s brave, and earnest, and warm, and good. But he’s Liam, not a readymade support system for all things bottled-up and unholy. Theo’s got secrets so old and unspoken they’ve fermented. And this, it isn’t mendable in the way of interpersonal conflicts, hunters, and supernatural big bads of the month. The two of them fight the physical things together. Listening to Liam’s clumsy silence—breathing to stall a solution—over the phone, Theo came to the profound realization that he must be alone in this. Liam cannot strap his oxygen mask on for him. He’s gotta do it on his own. 

But after Thanksgiving dinner, after slices of pumpkin pie ushered in couch-stupors for Jenna and David, Theo and Liam slipped out the front door chasing the elephant out of the room to follow it here, to Theo’s apartment. The two of them, shoulder-to-shoulder staring down at the fruits of his labor. Passive income, in the sense that all he really did is lie still to earn it. 

The middle drawer of his dresser is pulled out halfway, a pile of t-shirts shoved aside to uncover the stacks of envelopes. Liam picks one up, fingering through the row of bills inside. He stalls on a fifty-dollar bill with a faded red stain on its left corner. Theo’s not even sure that the stain’s a remnant of himself, could be pen ink for all he knows, but Liam’s breath hitches and his face scrunches up into something unsettled anyway. 

Liam counts. His lips move around silent syllables as his thumb glides over each bill. It’s a slow process, four envelopes long. When he’s finished, he sets the last of the envelopes down, runs a hand through his hair, and lets out a long, burdenous sigh. 

“Holy shit, Theo. This is…it’s a lot.” 

A lot of money. A lot of nights spent in motel rooms with strangers. A lot of blood spilled to make his ghosts rest. 

Theo draws his bottom lip between his teeth, bobbing his head. “Yeah. I know.” 

“When’s the last time you…” Liam nods in the direction of the envelopes. “Y’know.” 

“Three nights ago.” 

Liam keeps a straight face but his chemosignals have nowhere to hide. His scent goes sad and rain-dampened, wet pavement on an empty dead-end road. Maybe he expected promises of over-the-phone moral support to be enough to keep Theo away from motel rooms for a while. It wasn’t. And it’s not Liam’s fault. Theo has stubborn feet and a thing about living cyclically. Routines, patterns, all of it. They make an undirected life easy. 

The first time he went back to the Fairview, three days after the conversation with Stilinski and Parrish, he walked. An attempt to make his trips less obvious and traceable. There was a cruiser in the lot, far from unnoticeable even parked in the back with its lights off. Waiting for him, probably. He detoured to the fast-food joint two blocks past the motel and bided his time drinking dollar coffee and eating stale fries. Circled back an hour later to find the space empty. 

The sight disappointed him. Like maybe he wished they would’ve tried harder to keep him away. Inconvenience him into safety. Or pluck him from the street mid-step and put him on a different path, the way someone’s gotta manually redirect a remote control car that won’t stop ramming itself into a corner. 

Uncorner him. Force him to be good, and he will. He will. Compliance is his strong suit. 

“Look, I’ll be back in two weeks for winter break,” Liam says. “And until then, I’m a phone call away. I’m serious. It doesn’t matter when, you just—you need someone to talk to, then call me. Alright? Just. Not this, okay?”

He’s silent like the rooms before the knock on the door. He closes the drawer, doesn’t wanna look at it anymore. Steps in front of it, in front of Liam so that he can’t look at it either searching for the Theo he left when he went away to school. 

“Theo—”

“I can’t stay here, Liam.” 

He frowns, brows drawn in close waiting for an explanation. 

Beacon Hills made sense. Staying here did. Storybook ending type shit; it felt like Theo owed it to the life he never got to live to start fresh here. To graduate, and settle down, and relearn its landmarks for something beyond battlegrounds. But that’s bullshit. There’s no version of this life where Beacon Hills means anything other than bad memories. There’s no merit in staying if to stay is to suffer. He knows that now. 

Liam, his gutted silence, Parrish & Stilinski, their distress, it sent a message even to his reluctant ears. Stamped a big, bold why? on his conscience. Why do it, why allow it, why not fight the things that make you want to bleed. 

His spell underground taught him to pick and choose his battles. So he gave up fighting for himself. 

“I need to get out of here,” Theo sighs. He leans back against the dresser, feels the phantom pressure of his secrets enclosed within it. “For a while, I think.”

Bad roots. This town’s got them. Theo thinks it might be the Nemeton, maybe. Like its roots have wrapped around his ankles and kept him tethered here, kept him walking the same path over and over. 

“Yeah. Okay. I get it,” Liam nods, but his expression—flat, unsure, worried—says the opposite. 

“How long is your winter break?”

“Uh, three weeks.”

“Do you have plans?” Theo asks. 

“I dunno,” Liam exhales, shoulders slumping, “Sleeping till noon every day, watching shitty Christmas movies, I guess. Why?”

“Malia’s going on a trip in a couple weeks…I think I’m going with her. And Alec’s gonna join when his break starts, too.”

They talked about it, Theo and Alec, last night over Ghirardelli boxed brownies and heaping scoops of vanilla ice cream. Not it, the thing hiding in his dresser, but it, as in getting away as a panacea. Vague terms to describe the soul-sickness this town and its memories inflicts. Complete transparency was just out of reach; Alec puts way too much responsibility on himself for Theo’s wellbeing and even the mere mention of being something other than okay seems like it’ll break him, sometimes. He cares so much it’s stupid. But, really, the kid’s lost enough people that Theo thinks maybe he’s just worried about losing more, even in an impermanent way. 

“Cool,” Liam mumbles, rocking back on his heels. His voice is stiff and dejected. Like Theo and his leaving without him is a personal jab. “Where to?”

“France.” 

Malia booked a flight two weeks back, extended an invitation to Theo with the assurance that Peter would be easy to persuade into buying another ticket as long as she threw in the word “dad” somewhere in her request. 

It seemed improbable then. The possibility of doing anything other than being here. Like if Theo made it past the Beacon Hills city limits he’d phase out of existence into a mess of frequencies like his makers. But, maybe even that was tempting. Being noncorporeal. Respite. 

He said no. Because he’s never been on a plane before. Because he doesn’t have a passport. Because out of all the moving around he did with the Dread Doctors, the city he’s most familiar with is Beacon Hills because it’s the only one he’d been able to spend most of his time above the sewers in. 

Because his world has been so small and sharp and abnormal that he’s not even sure where to start. Lately he hasn’t been robbed of choice but instead overwhelmed by how much the world presented. Couldn’t admit that part out loud, though. 

But Malia frowned, offered the world’s most uncaring shrug, and said, “So? We’ll expedite it.” Just like that. “We.” And he remembered, then, that she spent a near-decade running from her memories as a coyote. And she can pull off conversation about window seats and ticket fares and hotel bookings like the only type of running she’s ever done is through airport security to catch a flight. 

So, maybe Theo can learn, too. 

“Do you wanna come with?” he asks. Easy, nonchalant. As if proposing a trip to the corner store. The corners of his lips quirked upward into a half-smile both apprehensive and hopeful. 

Liam falters, his eyes scan Theo’s face searching for a punchline.

“You’re serious?”

Theo nods like it’s the most certain he’s ever been. 

“Yeah.”

A grin splits across Liam’s face. And he smells like cut grass and bright, sunny things. Makes Theo think about Alec, and the brownies. How good they were. How, after a mouthful of hot brownie gone gooey and sweet with melted ice cream, he thought that if every time he felt deadened he baked brownies—teaching himself contentment by turning powder into something fudgy and warm; cracking eggs, and adding milk, and screwing around with the recipe by sprinkling instant coffee into the batter because all the brownie experts online say it makes them really fucking good, sitting in front of an oven and watching what his hands put together come to fruition—he’d probably be a lot better off. 

Alec had asked him, then, after they’d eaten half the tray and had sugar-crazed grins on their faces, “When was the last time you did something that made you really happy?” 

Theo thinks this. Liam here, smiling at him. This makes him happy. 

“Do you speak any French?”

Theo shrugs. “Un peu.”

“Okay,” he laughs, breathy and excited. “Fuck it, let’s go to France.”

Before Thanksgiving dinner, during the catch-up portion of their reunion, Theo had made some half-serious quip about wasting his life being idle. Something to deflect from all the 100-different-ways-to-ask-how-are-you questions Liam’s parents had for him. “Theo, come on,” David said, one hand planted firmly on his shoulder, his lips pulled into something wistful, almost jealous. “You’re nineteen. Your life isn’t over, man. It hasn’t even started.” 

⎶

The downy duvet threatens to swallow Theo whole as he lies spread-eagle atop it, staring up at the tall, paneled ceiling, waiting. The mattress smells faintly of lavender detergent. The day he checked in, jetlagged and reeking of plane air, Theo laid eyes on the bed and wanted nothing more than to do snow-angels in the fluffy white sheets. He stopped himself out of fear that the inclination was silly, and then kicked off his shoes, collapsed backward, and did it anyway. A lesson in respecting the benevolent things his body asks of him, nursing his self-respect back to health. 

He’s disobeying the doctrine of treating himself poorly. Consider it sin. For this, he will not repent. He is learning to be bad in a new way. Bad at self-cruelty, bad at letting the world wound him, bad at turning his guilt into a knife and inflicting the blade upon himself. 

It’s hard. Theo doesn’t know who he is when the answer isn’t being exhumed from his body. 

The week before he left Theo made seven different types of brownies. Peanut butter, cream cheese, oreo, nutella, walnut, caramel, double chocolate. And every time he’d eye the oven mitt lying unused beside the stove, and then remove the tray from the oven with his bare hands. He doesn’t have a withdrawal reflex. Human-him did, probably. But the body that remains doesn’t. Every night he held a hot pan of brownies and wondered what it meant that he could feel pain but could not feel inclined to rid himself of it. Singed-skin, heat death between his blistered palms and the ceramic handles, 350 degrees Fahrenheit of shame. Staring down at the receding burns—like nothing ever happened—and seeing himself in them. 

When frequent repetitions of stimuli are inflicted upon the Subject, the stimuli’s initial effect gradually diminishes. Operating table, Skinwalkers Prison, Fairview Motel, brownie tray. In the absence of stimuli, the Subject echoes its past, seeking feeling. 

Violence doesn’t really have a place here, on the fourth floor of a swanky hotel on Rue Amelot. Rue means street in French. Theo knows enough; acquired a familiarity with the language through The Surgeon’s books and files and case studies and bits and pieces of comments his ears would pick up on while being split wide open. Blood and Sang. Their interchangeability used to trip him up. He wanted to know what song his blood sang when The Surgeon cut him open. He never stayed conscious long enough to figure it out. In the sewers, French felt clinical and instructional, devoid of warmth. Here, people speak the language and each word sounds like a love letter to humanity. Rue. It also means regret. Theo doesn’t think that has a place here either. 

Theo sits up, traipses on socked feet along the burgundy carpet past the minibar, past the large wall mirror and flatscreen television, past the plush couch that Alec passed out on their first night here—after too many glasses of champagne that Malia, feeling generous, ordered bottle-after-bottle of using Peter’s credit card; it might as well have been nonalcoholic but the jetlag had them delirious and half-drunk anyway—and the cashew-colored walls decorated with framed reprints of paintings you could probably find in a classical art textbook, over to the long, gauzy drapes. He parts them to reveal a private balcony with a decent view of the Marais beyond it, all its stone buildings and cobbled streets and colorful storefronts. 

His ticket was one-way. He’s unwilling to be cyclical in this. Distance is a grand distraction. All around him, unfamiliarity. Nothing nearby reminds him of anything. He thinks that’s a good thing. 

There’s a knock on the door. Four quick, incessant raps. Theo crosses the room to greet it. Pulls the door wide open and steps aside as Liam and Alec enter. Liam’s got his arm bent at an awkward angle behind his back, concealing something from Theo’s line of sight. 

“Grab your stuff and come downstairs,” Alec says in lieu of a greeting. “Before we leave for Marseille I need help finding this girl in a green dress that was making eyes at me at the breakfast buffet.” 

Liam scoffs, “She wasn’t making eyes at you, dude, she was probably disgusted by the way you were scarfing down cold cuts and croissants.” 

Alec pauses, lips twisting into a frown. His shoulders sag. 

“Oh, shit. Didn’t think about that. Never mind, I’ll catch you guys down there. I gotta go redeem myself,” he sighs, hightailing it out of the room. His footsteps plodding down the hallway are loud, but his desperation is louder. 

Liam takes a step closer and shuts the door, says, “Hey. Malia, Cora, and Isaac are already waiting in the lobby. You missed breakfast.”

“Needed the sleep, and I figured they’ll have food on the train,” Theo shrugs. And what he means is, he’s been needing to relearn sleep without the aid of a body exhausted by healing itself. Six nights in Paris and he has been awake for three of them, balcony door wide open as he listened to all the life beyond his room. Up late deleting contacts and blocking numbers and trying to forget. 

“True. But until then,” Liam takes his hand from behind his back, brandishing a large crepe folded in napkins and handing it to Theo. “For you. Ham and cheese, from that vendor down the street. I even ran back here so it wouldn’t be all cold and soggy by the time we got to your room.” 

The crepe is warm in his hands and his cheeks heat up in solidarity. The savory aroma of melted cheese and meat waft up toward his nose to greet him. He stares, quiet in this, like every ounce of attention in his body is dedicated to committing this moment to memory.  

At his silence Liam falters, backtracking. 

“Oh. You woulda preferred a sweet one, right? I thought about it, but you’re all weird about breakfasts that double as desserts, so…”

“No, it’s good. Just—”

I’m happy, he thinks. He knows. Because his body tells him so. Nerve chatter. A flutter in his stomach—moth wings, not flies—lips twitching upward, inner lightness. 

And maybe it’s fleeting. 

On the plane—five hours into the eleven-hour flight, which Theo had spent concealing his aversion to small, enclosed spaces with no viable exits by gnawing his cheek until blood coated his tongue; a method to stay grounded when hurtling through the air 35,000 feet above the sea-level—the lights flickered and dimmed, and his head took him on a different trip. Morgue drawer. Looping hallway. A whisper of his name drifting through the air like the whir of the vent over his head. He felt astonishingly certain then more than ever that he would never escape memory. But Liam snored beside him. And his head drooped, landing on the edge of Theo’s shoulder. And even mid-sleep, his nose scrunched up as if disgruntled by the scent of Theo’s panic. And, well, he doesn’t have many bad memories that involve Liam beside him. 

So, fleeting. But that’s the nature of all felt things. The good and the bad. 

“Thank you,” he says. “For breakfast.” 

Liam hums, leaning forward to take a bite from the crepe just as Theo does. Their noses brush together, clumsy and deliberate. 

“Compensation,” he says, pulling away to grin at Theo through a mouthful of ham and cheese. “Ready to go?” 

Liam’s eyes are round and bright with the possibility of being and Theo wonders if he looks the same. They’ve got another two weeks and an eternity to go of a life that Beacon Hills can’t burden. Shame-ache and pain’s desire can find him later, but for now, Theo is eating a crepe in a hotel room on the other side of the world. The dead live inside of him but he can for a moment be unhaunted. There is good to nurture within him yet. The sun glides through the wide balcony windows, curls around Theo, and doesn’t ask anything of him beyond what will you be today?  

Present, he thinks. Here. 

Alive, I guess.